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Parenthood In Frankenstein

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Good parents are often caring, compassionate, and good role models for their children, which usually means they prioritize their children, even themselves. On the other hand, bad parents are either neglectful or abusive, often putting themselves and their wishes before their children. In Frankenstein, a novel by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein; the ‘parent’ aspires and successfully builds a creature; the ‘child’; who he then abandons. The central themes of Frankenstein, the immorality of unnatural creation and the importance of responsibility and accountability, are represented through the repercussions of Frankenstein’s neglect of his creature. When Frankenstein created his creature, he was mesmerized by his passion and goal of the resurrection, …show more content…

Frankenstein and his creature’s parent-child dynamic is evident as the monster refers to Frankenstein as his creator, asking him to destroy him if he desired to: “‘Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom you art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?’” (68). Frankenstein’s creature questions Victor’s motives in creating him since it is inconsistent with his goal of destroying him. Their dynamic is symbolic of a neglectful parent-child relationship because Frankenstein’s inconsiderate treatment of his ‘child’ demonstrates him as an absent and abusive ‘parent.’ The creature’s belief in Victor’s abandonment and lack of guidance causes his deplorable behavior and actions cause Victor to feel more accountable: “But as I proceeded, I weighed the various arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to his tale…For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were” (70). Frankenstein’s guilt toward his creature illustrates their parent-child relationship because of the parallel between Frankenstein hearing out the creature and a parent listening to their child. In other words, Frankenstein and his creature’s dynamic is similar to a parent-child relationship because of the nurturing role victor was supposed to fill but did

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Parents are the guiding lights in our lives, but they can also be the source of our deepest wounds. This is clearly visible in the cases of Holden Caulfield and Frankenstein’s creature, as their shared parental negligence greatly impacts their development. Instead of providing the nurturing he requires, Holden's parents send him to fend for himself in boarding schools, and Frankenstein’s creature faces immediate rejection and hatred from his creator. Between Holden and Frankenstein’s creature, their shared parental neglect is the major contributing factor that leads to their social outcast status, leaving them emotionally scarred and struggling to acclimate to society. Victor Frankenstein intended to create a beautiful creature that would bring him

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contains valuable lessons about the role love plays in providing one with life, liberty and happiness. Shelley portrays Victor and the Creature as products of very different environments who nonetheless end up with similar mindsets in which revenge is thought of as a pact and love is a basic necessity. Victor’s early years are spent with boundless amounts of love, whereas the Creature is spurned from the beginning of his existence. However, at the end of the novel, both Victor and the Creature are driven by a relentless need to take vengeance upon the other. These factors are used to define the characteristics of Victor and the Creature and shape their psychological makeup.

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After successfully creating the monster, Frankenstein is perplexed by what he has created. Due to the monster’s annoyance with Frankenstein, he acts back against Frankenstein mostly due to his lack of parenting and responsibility. Shelley’s novel strongly connects with the act of parenting. It is clear that Victor Frankenstein did not complete his role as a parent. Due to this, it further led the monster to misbehave and feel as if he does not have a purpose in life.

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Finally, Victor owes happiness to his creation. He did not ask to be created, and he was given a rude introduction to the world. For this, Frankenstein’s monster sees his “father,” Victor, as a cruel father. Victor could prove to his creation that he is a good parent by making him a companion, by making him content with living.

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As the monster finds himself desiring a companion, he is seized by the idea that children are “unprejudiced and have lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” (Shelly 143). The creature’s intentions were to ‘adopt’ the child that was playing in the field where he had come to rest. In the creature’s attempt to talk to the child, he discovers that the young boy is Victor’s brother. When the monster realizes that the little boy is related to Frankenstein, who he wants to make as miserable as he is, the creature kills him. By killing the child that he wanted to ‘adopt,’ the monster continued the cycle of neglect by becoming a battering parent.

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After telling Victor the story of his short, miserable life, the creature’s longing to be a part of a family continues as he begs Victor to give him a female creature, similar to himself, that he can run away and avoid humanity with forever. The creature explains to Victor “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley 156). The absence of family throughout Frankenstein causes psychological as well as physical illness in several characters.

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Through the characters in the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley emphasizes the importance of a strong parent-child relationship during a child’s development. Shelley exemplifies the negative effects of an unhealthy parent-child relationship

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This is a parallel to the importance of a child and parent relationship. The child needs to be both physically and emotionally encouraged by a parent figure in order to successfully grow up. The lack of this is evident in the relationship between Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein and his monster. Frankenstein, the parent in this relationship, does not supply the monster, the child, with the needed nurturing that he receives

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From Son to Satan: Parenting in the 17th century Often in a novel, an author will make the relationship between a parental figure and a child be one of conflict to emphasize their relationship to each other. However, in the 1818 Gothic Romantic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley uses the father and son relationship between scientist Victor Frankenstein and the creature as a tool to demonstrate that one must take responsibility for their actions and that monsters are not born monsters visualized through Victor’s abandonment of the creature, the monsters reaction to being shunned and Victor’s failure to comply with the creatures request to create a partner. The inception of the conflict between the two characters began when Victor became

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When his mother was still alive, Frankenstein viewed his parents’ parental roles as responsibilities in a professional sense, rather than through unconditional love, which he continues to believe in later in life. He explains that “[he] was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards [him]” (Shelley 35). By labelling parenting as “a duty” and describing himself as “the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven” (Shelley 35), Victor Frankenstein displays his accumulated knowledge on familial relationships – that parenting requires only responsibility rather than affection. Frankenstein is only familiar with love out of obligation , which “seems to take the place of a typical father of the 19th century who wanted a child to claim as a possession rather than a responsibility” (Harris 3).

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The monster continues by reassuring the creator of his independent intelligence and power over the creature by telling Frankenstein, “This you alone can do”. Here, the creature assumes a role of submissiveness and reliance on Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster gains the sympathy of the reader who, despite condemning the murder of innocent people, commiserate with the lonely creature who is in search of an acquaintance, which he will likely never find. The monster also displays power and aggressiveness over Frankenstein; “You are my creator; but I am your master; obey!” The monster wants to desolate Victor’s heart, not by killing him directly,

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines how the presence of a mother, negatively or positively, affects the development of a child. Victor’s mother, Caroline Frankenstein, dies while Victor is still a young man (he is about 17 years old), breaking their relationship between mother and son. Because Victor loses his bond with his mother, he is unable to act as a mother would when he creates his creature. Caroline Frankenstein’s absence in Victor’s life creates a disunion between the mother and child bond, which is evident in Victor’s creation and his fragmented relationship with the creature. Caroline Frankenstein, Victor’s mother, portrayed a traditional mother in the Frankenstein household, until her death.

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Parents are everyone 's first role models. Regardless of biological relation, those who raise us have a profound influence on the way we perceive and interpret life. Parents lay the foundation of our first sense of morality and empathy, and usher us to the path of our development of social skills. No matter how consciously one may attempt to have no resemblance to their parents, it is an inevitability of life that we will harness aspects of their influence and carry them through our lifetime. In Mary Shelley’s, “Frankenstein”, the influence of parental figures is displayed by the morals and values instilled in the monster.

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