Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster in the novel. Discuss how Shelley manipulates the readers feelings as the story develops.

Authors Avatar

Reshmal Barot

FRANKENSTEIN

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster in the novel. Discuss how Shelley manipulates the reader’s feelings as the story develops.

Mary Shelley was born in August 1797 in London. She was the only daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist writer. During her lifetime Shelley suffered dreadfully from the deaths of her family and friends. Her mother died almost immediately after giving birth and Shelley was bought up by her father and his second wife. In her teenage years her dearly loved half-sister committed suicide. Later on in her life, Shelley experienced a widow’s life and of the four children she had, she lost three of them in early stages of their life. Someone you would think had great claim to the benefits of bringing dead back to life.

The idea of Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley whilst holidaying in Switzerland with her husband and some friends. It was whilst listening to Lord Byron and her husband’s conversations when they were discussing the nature of the principle of life and talking about the experiments of Dr Darwin. He was a scientist in the 1800’s, who believed it was possible to bring the dead back to life. The night after this conversation, Shelley experienced a disturbing nightmare about the creation of life. It struck her, she could develop this nightmare into her ghost story, she thought “if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!” This concept had shocked Shelley into creating a frightening ghost story with a difference, where the creation of the ghoul, and not the ghost itself, is the focus of the suspense.

As well as creating a ghost story, I sense Mary Shelley wished to raise the ethical uncertainties of the scientific developments of her time. During Shelley’s time, scientists were considering the possibility of bringing the dead back to life. Scientists were learning more and more about the human body. It is apparent that one of Shelley’s intentions was to acknowledge the scientific efforts of her time moreover the general public was very interested in these developments and breakthroughs. It is also supposed that Shelley was interested in electricity, premature concepts of evolution and other post-Enlightenment developments. In Frankenstein's introduction, Editor M. K. Joseph writes that “Mary Shelley wrote in the infancy of modern science, when its enormous possibilities were just beginning to be seen.” Shelley’s writing can be commonly related with today’s society, since the 1800’s there have been many developments and discoveries regarding the human body. Today, the amount of people who use human cloning has increased masses. There are more transplants, abortions and designer babies than ever before. Furthermore, human cloning is not entirely successful, but it can improve many lives. Some say, humans do not have the right to play god’s role, or humans do not have the right to destroy or adapt god’s creatures. Cloning would give some people a second chance at a normal life, people who had birth defects or who got injured or disabled early in life. Even though transplants may sound monstrous, imagine a young boy about ten or eleven, just starting his life, he will die without a bone marrow transplant. Well, with cloning, the doctors would not have to look for a donor, and can try recovering him from his illness right away. I assume Shelley’s intentions were to give the readers an understanding that a clone can be a real person, raised and born. But moreover it is the creator’s responsibility to think long and hard on the impacts socially. By doing this Shelly is shifting the thoughts away from the “monster” and back to the monstrous notion of playing god. This is what Dr Frankenstein is doing in this novel.

In the book, Shelley names the creation a “monster”; a monster can be defined as “an exceptionally cruel or wicked person.” But I believe that the creation was not exceptionally cruel to begin with, so I have decided to call the creation a creature. Because I consider the term “monster” only reflects on the physical aspects of the creature. I feel that is why Shelley chose it because “monster” is also defined as “an imaginary beast, usually frightening in appearance” and this describes the creature’s appearance precisely. I believe it is important not to judge a creature by its appearance but by it other qualities, such as feelings, values and beliefs. Perhaps Dr Frankenstein’s is human in appearance but his actions are those of a monster.

Join now!

The young Victor decided he wanted to pursue a career in chemistry and describes it as his “sole occupation”. His interest in chemistry, took up a lot of his time. Shelley emphasises Dr Frankenstein’s fondness of chemistry by telling us he spent two years without visiting Geneva; the city where his supposed beloved family lived and also uses emotive vocabulary “…. engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make.” Throughout chapter 4, Shelley expresses the trills Victor gets from his work and shows the excitement he gets from his “painful labour”. Whilst ...

This is a preview of the whole essay