The Perceptions Of Guilt In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Actions are motivated in the response others give them, how they are treated, or how they feel within themselves. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is full of gothic literature and elements that shape each character to fit the storyline. The book contains psychological references and the early 1800’s perceptions of insanity shown through the protagonist Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein seems to enjoy living a life of misery and guilt. The grief he has from the death of his mother Caroline, is used to power the making of his creature, and experiment with his interest in birth and death. Throughout the book, Victor regrets creating the monster, as it is an image of all his failures, but what he doesn’t realize is that the Creature turns out

As Mary Shelley proves through Victor’s character when he says, “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness” (Shelley 89). The happiness in your life is up to you, your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Victor lives a miserable life because he surrounds himself in grief and misery. All he can think and feel is grief and regret because of what he did and what those actions cost him. For example how he created a Creature that could destroy anything and anyone. How he mistreated the monster, resulting in it lashing out and killing his family members. And finally how he worried his father to death after he was also filled with grief from seeing what Victor grew up to be. Seeing Frankenstein, in a psychological viewpoint digs deeper into “finding the unconscious meanings hidden by substitution, a defense used to conscioulsy express an emotionally charged but unconscious issue that would be unbreakable were its real meaning open to conscious view” (Ketterer). Just as Victor hides his insecurities and covers up his true feelings, the Creature is Mary Shelley’s cover up and symbol of what Percy, her husband, did to the love between them and their relationship. The incompatible Mary and Percy shared the common obsession of their fathers over their mothers, and is shown through Victor in the novel. Victor’s father Alphonse, being so significant, is the monster’s last victim although he doesn’t directly die due to the creature, but grief. The relationship between Victor and Alphonse leads to the psychological key to the whole novel. Alphonse nurtured Victor to be a happy, well rounded person, and ends in dying due to the grief that Victor grew up to be the opposite of that. Although Alphonse tried teaching Victor the good, it only proves that in the end, happiness and