The hideous figure, the disfigured stature of this monster is the first thing noticed by Victor Frankenstein. “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles.” This reference to the monster’s yellow skin depicts the same behaviour conducted in modern day racism. The colour of one’s skin does not dictate the intelligence, attitude and personality of a person. Regardless of the yellow skin of the monster, which would repulse and overwhelm most people, there is no need to carry over that emotion to judge the monster’s intellectual side. The mind and body are two very different things; human beings have yet to distinguish that fact. Mary Shelley clearly feels very strongly about this unfair prejudice in place in society, and has tried (very successfully) to show her readers just how unjust it really is. However, until people actually do something about it, it is just a part of society which we will probably never be entirely without. We may feel that it is wrong, but it will always be there, and it is something people have learnt to deal with in society.
The novel, “Frankenstein”, actually reflects quite badly on the society in which Mary Shelley lived. It suggests that this type of behaviour was carrying on back then towards “different” people and was accepted as part of every day life. Humans have always and will continue to be scared of the unknown. Some might say that what you don’t know about can’t hurt you, but there is a sense of mystery and darkness behind unidentified things. This fear is ever increasing alongside the amount of horror films and novels, by which the general public is heavily influenced – maybe sometimes too heavily. The public has always been influenced by the media, which is created by society, and with an increasing amount of stories and films out with the intention of scaring the audience, people are getting more and more prejudiced towards the unknown. Luckily this is counteracted by an increasing knowledge of other cultures and races, but Shelley lived in a society where people were still very ignorant about other people, and automatically assumed the worst. Although it is not shown outright, in “Frankenstein”, the monster actually experiences this fear as well as the villagers when he comes into their town. Their fears were of the same thing – the unfamiliar; however their reactions were completely different. Some villagers threw rocks, and were trying to drive the monster away as if it was a worthless piece of society; others simply ran away in shock, screaming and scared. This is not justified by anything except his demeanor. The monster, on the other hand, did not reply in a violent manner at all, he just tried to hide from all people from then on. This just goes to show how much people are affected by small things in their life. One incident such as this could ruin an entire life, and the villagers did not realise just how selfish they were being. They did not think about his feelings, and left him to support himself, poor and defenseless. The public do not realise how much little things they may pass off as unimportant affect others, and in this case, society ruined the monster’s life. From that moment and for the rest of his existence, the monster knew not to interfere with human beings, for their nature was clearly different to his. The monster, like all human beings, wanted to be accepted for his intellectual abilities and personality, and both him and humans have it in their nature to be afraid of the unknown, yet the villagers had an unmistakable advantage over the monster – the monster was still innocent and naïve, unsure of the world around him and ignorant of human nature. He was not accepted by anyone, purely because of his appearance. This fact is obvious as no one as yet had even had the chance to get to know the monster’s personality, not even the monster himself had had this opportunity, because he could not speak and did not know anything about society. Therefore human nature plays an incredibly important role in the novel, because without it the villagers would probably have accepted the monster, and he would never have turned out how he did.
Society is inevitable. It will always be there as a pleasure and a burden. Society puts labels on everything as good or bad, rich or poor, normal or aberrant. Although some of these stamps are accurate, most of them are misconceptions. Shelley simply makes this known to the reader, so that they can see the error of their ways.
Society is also very ignorant, as can be seen later on in the book, when they kill Justine because she is the only person that could have possibly have done such an evil act. They again wrongly label Justine as the killer. They do not look into the facts but instead find a quick and easy answer to the problem. This again shows the ignorance of society in this novel.
The faults with Mary Shelley’s society are again shown up by the one person who is not repulsed by the vile appearance of the monster – a blind man. If society is so ignorant that not even a single person could look at the monster without taking violent action or running away in fright, Shelley is surely trying to tell us something – that society is ignorant and there is nothing that can be done about it. The old man is in the house the monster tries to find shelter in, and when at last he thinks he has found it, he has barely had time to make a conversation with the man before his children enter the cottage and start driving the monster away with a stick. The daughter is scared and flees the cottage, and it is the son who attacks the monster. At this point in the book, the monster has done nothing to deserve the title “monster”, yet he was given no name for him to be called otherwise. This is very inhumane, as people resorted to simply calling the monster, “it.”
There is another form of nature, though, which also plays a large part in this novel, and that is the power of the natural world. Nature is presented as possessing an immense curative power; the beauty of the natural world heals Victor when he is too miserable to find solace anywhere else. Nature is very significant in this book, as large parts of it are devoted to describing the surrounding scenery and natural events, even when they are not beautiful - “the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens.” Frankenstein takes pleasure in being close to nature, as you can see from the quote, as he finds even the most destructive of nature’s powers amazing, and thinks they are from “heaven”. The whole book obviously revolves around the monster, and he himself is a product of nature. Not only is any living thing automatically part of nature (and it is true to say that Frankenstein’s monster has been given a life), but also if it weren’t for nature he would never have been created in the first place. It is things like these which make us realise that even without mentioning nature, it still plays an essential part in the book.
The flash of lightning from Victor’s childhood sparked off an immense compulsion to explore nature and science. From that point in his life he had a great yearning for knowledge and started reading books such as Paradise Lost, as well as books about the works of great scientists like Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. “Here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple.” This shows Frankenstein’s love of science, and he uses a good metaphor to describe his feelings towards the above mentioned scientists – they were his gods and he was their disciple. This inspires Victor to go on to become a great doctor and physicist, studying at a university in Ingolstadt. It is here that Victor’s passions for learning the secrets of nature are revealed. These authors were not regarded as serious scientists in Victor’s world, and were shunned by his father, who dismissed them as “sad trash”, yet Frankenstein’s determination overruled this and he continued to learn more and more each day. If it weren’t for these books, which were only read because of a flash of lightning, Victor would never have had a passion for science and would not have created the being in this novel, which means that the entire purpose of the novel can be traced back to a single bolt of lightning – a marvel of nature to young Frankenstein’s eyes. This part of the book shows Victor’s enthusiasm for what is still merely a harmless game, “I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.” It is preparing the reader for what is to come, but the sheer volume of Victor’s interest is unstoppable and quite disturbing for a child of his age.
The novel is set at a time when science was of ever-growing importance, and this scared many people. Theories were appearing which people did not understand, which went against everything they had assumed to happen in the world. People were finding out that all is not as it seems, and as more and more of the scientific world unfolded to society, the more and more people wanted to find. Some were obsessed with science, striving to find out new things, which only set people unnerved. They thought science would take the place of nature, but this novel goes to show that this is not true – instead, they can only work together, and as the importance of science grows, so does the importance of nature, especially in this novel. “Frankenstein” proves that science and nature can both work together in society, and shows how important they are in today’s communities.
At the time it was written, just after the French Revolution, people were also obsessed with romanticism and Gothicism. This novel incorporates both of these, by dealing with the social issues of poverty, unemployment and violence. It appealed to reader’s in Mary Shelley’s society, as well as our own today, and opened eyes to the dangers of society and the wonders of nature.
The story of Frankenstein is about a man who creates something that meddles with the course of nature, and nature comes back to mess with him, which just goes to show the power of nature. It presents nature as both beautiful and destructive at the same time. It shows that there is more to this world than meets the eye, and that all things are not either good or bad, it simply depends on how you use them. It reflects on Mary Shelley’s social background, suggesting that she wanted to try and change the world, or at least warn them of the consequences of certain actions, which are even more important now than ever. The book is very successful in both horrifying the reader, but also in discerning the dangers of interfering with the most powerful force in the world – nature.
