Parental Rejection In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Effects of Parental Rejection In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates the creature. However, he immediately runs away because it was so hideous, abandoning his creation. After experiencing rejection from his creator, the creature feels resentful toward Victor, leading it to kill three of Victor’s close friends and family. Research has shown that the perceived parental rejection results in children growing up to be violent and depressed. Parental rejection is the negative treatment of children by their parents or guardians, who weren’t necessarily abused or neglected, but were raised with little to no love. Studies on the effects of parental rejection showed that parents who were rejecting of their children,

In the South American village of Aritama, Colombian mestizo parents often openly rejected their own children, by ignoring them, being careless, and even showing hostility. This was because mestizo children were not seen as humans, but merely property of their parents. Children were often left to die from diseases and had little to no affection, or even interaction, with their own mothers and fathers. Infants were often tossed around roughly treated without empathy. Anthropologist studying rejected Colombian Mestizo children had found that in response to the indifferent treatment, “children will roll on the floor, beat their heads against the wall, and may even break their teeth while doing so” (R. Rohner and E. Rohner 193). These severely violent temper tantrums would continue in their childhood, developing to become even worse as they get older. Once the rejected mestizo children learn to speak, “they scream threats against their mother, which become increasingly verbose and insulting as the child acquires a wider vocabulary” (R. Rohner and E. Rohner 193). In another study, American children who were categorized as rejected in the 1930s and 40s were retraced in 1970s to study the long term effects of parental rejection. Researchers had found that the rate of juvenile delinquency was significantly higher in rejected children than loved children. “As

Individuals who were suffering from depression had reported that they recalled more negative experiences with their parents, recalling them as uncaring and rejecting. A study done on 200 adults, 104 males and 96 females, assessed the link between depression, suicidality, and parental rejection. Through the study, it was shown that parental rejection was associated with self-critical perfectionism, which is, “an inability to derive satisfaction from successful performance, and chronic concerns about others’ criticism and performance” (Campos and Blatt 60). This is because parental rejection causes individuals to have low self-esteem and be insecure, which plays a role in the outlook that characterizes self-criticism. Self-critical perfectionism is linked with depression and suicide, which indirectly associates parental rejection to that as well. Other research also showed that the depression inflicted by parental rejection can also affect the next generation. Another study examined the multigenerational effect of parental rejection and its connection to depression. By questioning a sample of 451 two-parent families of their family life, they had found that women who had experienced parental rejection from their own mothers became depressed, which caused them to rejecting their own offspring as