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The Paradox Of Aesthetics In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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“The Monster You Made Me”: The Paradox of Aesthetics in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is a classic example of literature that can maintain a vice grip on readers for centuries after its publication. The novel captivates audiences through its employment of imagery and the horrifying descriptions of the consequences for meddling with the fundamental forces beyond our understanding. This Gothic novel explores themes related to knowledge, nature, and the ethics of creation. Although these themes are the most widely analyzed and interpreted, the idea of beauty and its impact on the world is just as important and prevalent within the story.
Through the motivations of Victor Frankenstein and the characterization of his creation, Mary Shelley …show more content…

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my enquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (Shelley 25). Through this quote Mary Shelley suggests that beauty is not simply a matter of physical attractiveness, but a complex concoction of inner qualities and external factors.
This idea of a deeper, more complex beauty is further emphasized through the creation of the
“Creature”. Victor’s obsession with creating life is driven not only by his desire to understand the natural world but also his yearning to create something beautiful. While working on this project, Victor exhumes and dismembers multiple corpses to acquire the necessary materials to build his Creature. Instead of simply sewing together the body parts that he has on hand, Victor cuts off specific features from the cadavers that he identifies as attractive. His patchwork golem is not merely a pile of flesh and bone,

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All humans find themselves obsessively determined to succeed in gaining something, whether it be knowledge, a promotion, or someone’s love, only to find out that what they thought they were going to get is not what they actually wanted at all. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes this phenomena occurring within Victor Frankenstein’s internal narrative. He is obsessed and determined to discover the secret of life, and once he does he realizes its effects on not only his life, but others’ as well. Throughout the passage found on pages 30-31, Mary Shelley reveals the attitudes of curiosity, wonder, and determination through descriptive characterization of Victor Frankenstein and his thoughts, effectively bringing her own attitudes to fruition through language, symbols, and sentence structure.

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The Consequences of Physical Appearance in Frankenstein The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a science fiction story about a creature created from non-living matter, by a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein. The conflict between society and Frankenstein’s creature is largely perpetuated by a split between those considered attractive, and those who are not. The conflict and language use in Frankenstein demonstrate that most of society judges others based on their physical appearance, which leads to excluding those who fall outside the accepted definition of beauty and sometimes life-threatening consequences for both groups.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is a novel that exposes many themes and ideas with the assistance of literary and stylistic techniques. Shelley explores certain ideas about good and evil including the idea that happiness is valuable, that through persistent negative inputs someone’s outward character becomes their inside beliefs and that there will be no rest until there remains only one god. These ideas closely interlink with the themes of good and evil which allows for contrast, giving the audience an opportunity to gain their own meaning. Foreshadowing is used to effectively develop the story, while the metaphors are used to give the readers a visual understanding of the storyline. Shelley makes all these components work together to form a

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He dreamed of creating a new species but gave no thought to the hardships they would endure or the catastrophes they may cause (Oates 548). Victor takes responsibilities for their achievements and imagines his creations seeing him as God, but when he goes through with his plans, Victor does not feel any responsibility towards his first creature and its failings due to its unusual and horrifying appearance. Victor describes that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” due to the creature’s looks (Shelley 57). This highlights the unknown and uncontrollable nature of life and death as well as the superficiality of the world in the novel. This may also reflect Mary Shelley’s view of the world and how quickly its inhabitants will turn on someone who does not fit their strict societal

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Victor expected his creation to be magical, but it wasn’t. There was no beauty in the horror he created. Victor was disgusted by his creature at first, but he didn’t try to kill it. He knew that this thing, whatever it was, could be dangerous, but the violence may have been his only link to understanding the monster; one thing that Victor always loved was nature. He often found himself awestruck at the beauty of it.

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The Ugly Truth About Beauty In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley excels at accurately portraying how social beauty standards, along with being alienated from society, affects one’s perception of oneself. For the most part, when people think of “Frankenstein,” they immediately think of “monster.” However, Frankenstein is the creator of the creature - a creature who in actuality is unfit to suit the label of “monster” and is not given a name. In the midst of the novel, the creature becomes aware of other people’s appearances, the beauty they possess, and how it is all so different from his own image. Attempting to comprehend the newly found information causes the creature to question his own appearance, and once he does so, the view he once had of himself is altered.

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He used various seemingly “perfect” body parts found in graveyards to create a new being that would be bound to him and made in his image. The monster that Victor creates is hideous and violent which provides a parallel for his own flaws. I believe that Shelley chose to write this novel to highlight the flaws that are present in our society.

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That all the deeds done by the monster in the novel is totally the fight towards beauty and ugliness. This throws light upon the idea it is not always simple to know about goodness and evilness with regard to outer beauty but it’s the beauty of the soul as the victor was projected as a good and loving human being and the monster evil but we can realize throughout the novel that this might be up turned for both victor and the monster Mary Shelley depicted the phenomena of beauty vs. ugliness of the soul very prominently in the novel Frankenstein .

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Beauty and ugliness is often used to justify the reaction of others in the novel, Frankenstein; in which the relation between external appearance and internal desires are shown to be related. The theme of how appearance affects judgement is often demonstrated through the characters response to the monster’s physical being. Shelley depicts this situation through Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the Delacey family, and through the monster himself. The use of appearance to determine judgement is shown to be a negative habit. By automatically associating ugliness with evil, and beauty with innocence, society unintentionally develops a negative being in those considered ugly, while at the same creating an illusion of innocence over beautiful individuals.

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Nature helped deeply characterize the turmoil in Victor’s mind as the creature comes to life. After bringing his creation to life, victor describes “His shrivelled complexion

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, being confined to her home, spent a lot of time in her family library. She read many philosophers that still hold present ideals today, including: Burke, Descartes, Locke, Blake and Wordsworth. These readings that Shelley did influenced her writing; the ideals of the aforementioned philosophers are all evident throughout the work of Frankenstein and her larger question of whether or not humans should deal with something they don’t entirely understand, in this case science. The story of Frankenstein, being one of the first gothic novels, is inherently sublime. Throughout the romanticist period, there was a trend about going back to nature through artistic medians.

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The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

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