The turning point in Victor’s life is signalled in chapter 5. The dispair and disbelief, of the creature’s ugliness clearly shows the disappointment that he feels towards his experiments. Victor finally sees the consequences of his actions for the first time and instead of caring for the creature like he should, he abandons it and leaves it to the mercy of the outside world like a mother abandoning her newborn baby. Another gothic image is the unnatural birth of the creature, the absence of a womb, the abundance of machines and electricity tells us no good will come from this birth. One of the key themes that are mentioned again and again in the book is that ironically, Victor fails to experience the sense of duty to his creation that his own parents had felt for him. This is another reason why the creature might have decided to turn evil. It did not have a stable father figure to tell it what was wrong and what was right and so this led him to follow his instincts. However, Victor is not just the father figure to this creature, he is also the mother as well as its God. The creature cannot be blamed for the actions that he has committed. Society has outcast it, Victor who made the creature has made a conscious effort to repress the creature and so the creature feels as though it is unloved and wants someone to be his friends and he wants someone to love as well.
The monster hoped to gain friendship from an old man and eventually his children. He knew that it could have been possible because the old man was blind; he could not see the monster's repulsive characteristics. However, fate was against him and the "wretched" had barely conversed with the old man before his children returned from their journey and saw a monstrous creature at the foot of their father attempting to do harm to the helpless elder.
"Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore from his father..."
Felix's action caused great inner pain to the monster. He knew that his dream of living with them "happily ever after" would not happen. After that bitter moment the monster believed that,
"The human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union” and with the De Lacey encounter still fresh in his mind along with his first encounter of humans, he declared war on the human race.
The use of pathetic fallacy in chapter 7 gives us a greater perception into what Victor is thinking. The “peace of the mountains” seems to mock his sadness and now, nature seems to mock Victor as before he used to immerse himself in it. At this moment, Victor sees the creature in the flash of lightning under the moonlight. The fact that the creature always appears underneath the moonlight or in a flash of lightning exerts a demonic theme. Mary Shelley borrows heavily, as do most Gothic writers, from the Romantic genre, in the use of the sublime. The use of awe-inspiring scenery has helped to bring out many things in ‘Frankenstein’. For example, the Alps are transcendent, which helps to link with the monster, who lived there, whom Shelley wants to portray as superhuman – (p 94) ‘advancing towards me with superhuman speed’ - and at one with nature – ‘he descended the mountain with …the speed of an eagle’. We must argue whether the creature is an alter ego of Frankenstein himself. Frankenstein is all the creature wants to be and the creature is what Frankenstein fears of becoming. The monster also symbolises what Frankenstein has done wrong. Victor’s description of the creature as a “wretch” and “filthy” demon affects the reader’s perception.
In chapter 8, Shelly introduces one of the key themes in the book, the political theme of the justice system. She shows the unfairness of the legal system and reveals the corruption in the religious institutions. The judges make Justine confess to a lie show the mockery made of the justice system. This is a macabre irony that a man of God would abuse his power. We must take note of the fact that the judges make Justine feel like a “monster”. So we must ask ourselves whether a monster is a symbol of those mistreated by society?
The creature’s source of hatred towards humans originates from its first experiences with humans. In a way the monster started out with a child-like innocence that was eventually shattered by being constantly rejected by society time after time. His first encounter with humans was when he opened his yellow eyes for the first time and witnessed Victor Frankenstein, his creator, rush out of the. This wouldn’t have happened if society did not consider physical appearance to be important. If physical appearance were not important then the creature would have had a chance of being accepted into the community with love and care. But society does believe that physical appearance is important and it does influence the way people act towards each other. Frankenstein should have made the creature less offending if even he, the creator, could not stand his disgusting appearance. There was a moment however when Frankenstein was moved by the creature. He felt what the duties of a creator were and decided that he had to make another creature, a companion for the original. Yet the haunting images of his creation (from the monster's first moment of life) gave him an instinctive feeling that the monster would do menacing acts with his companion.
We as a society are the ones responsible for the transformation of the once child-like creature into the monster we all know.
In ‘The Fifth Child’, the use of setting is rather subtler. Sublime scenery may be lacking, but other aspects that occur in Frankenstein also occur here.
Ben’s room resembles a prison cell, with bars on the window. Signifying that he has been shut off from the rest of the world – secluded. Not only the room is gothic, though. The house, which has always been described as too big, is not in a town, and the adjoining area is never talked about, giving us a feeling of isolation. The asylum that Ben goes to is probably the most significant Gothic setting in this novel; it is described as a ‘large solid building of dark stone, …three rows of regular windows were barred…’ This asylum is where parents to the ‘freaks’ send their children. Apart from these children, only two other people are in the huge building. Harriet, when she enters, feels alone, and a little scared, which is an emotion the Gothic genre thrives upon. Harriet is also emotionally isolated in the novel. After having Ben, everybody silently condemns her.
In The Fifth Child, the idea of fate is used heavily when Ben is in Harriet’s womb. There is a dark foreboding – a sense of inevitability – that the baby is not going to be normal. All the advice (and ‘prophecies’) that the family’s friends give can also be seen as fate, for Harriet and David purposely ignore advice to stop having children and not to buy the big house. This dread is similar in both novels; from early on in the book, we can tell that the fate of the main character/s is not going to be good. In Frankenstein this dread is triggered by the lab – a dark dingy place where Victor is working night and day – giving up sleep; taking parts from the graveyard; generally there is a morbid feel to the whole experiment. In The Fifth Child, it is when Harriet and David buy the house, which is obviously too big for them, out of greed. The fact that they plan to have a large family but don’t plan to financially support it (and have to ask David’s father for money) makes us feel that they are being irresponsible, and this leads to apprehension from the reader’s part, and a sense that somewhere along the line, their dream is not going to be fulfilled. One can see that their doom is in the disintegration of their family; this is apparent as soon as we are told what Ben is like, and we even suspect it from his disturbing time in the womb.
In the Fifth Child the concept of an outside world, which perceived as being bad and evil, is excluded at the beginning of the novel but gradually pervades later into the novel. This is in co injunction with the behaviour of Ben. As he is exposed to the outside world more and more, his behaviour becomes exceedingly more violent. It seems that Ben is a metaphor representing the evil that is the outside or society. He brings out the worst in everyone. Ben and the creature in Frankenstein have many similarities. When both of them are bought into existence, they are both gruesome in appearance; both are abnormally strong, violent and very demanding. In the same sense as the creature from Frankenstein, Ben is also rejected by society because of his appearance and thus he is sought to seek refuge in an asylum. Ben is given a room with bars, which symbolises his separation from his family and family. Though the irony is that Ben needed more attention that any of his other siblings though he gets less as people are put off by his size, abnormalities and appearance. So again we see that society is treating someone who looks different very anti socially and thus when we relate this back to Frankenstein, the story is also the same with the creature. When referring these statements back to the main title, we can see that society, in this case, is the route of all-evil.
Where there was nothing but kindness, warmth and comfort in the household, there is now restraint, wariness and anxiety. Harriet and Ben are finding themselves in a moral conflict between their instincts and their shocked to their fierce and unlovable baby. Their vision of the world as a simple and benign place is threatened by the mere existence of Ben.
Though throughout the book, Lessing is giving us a look into society’s unwillingness to accept people who look different. If society accepted that Ben was more needy than some of the other children, Ben might not have turned out to be the violent and angry child that he is.
So in conclusion, is the prejudice of society really the root of all-evil? In my opinion, it is partly the case in Frankenstein because society first of all thinks that the monster is evil just because it looks different from everyone else. Though, the truth was that the monster was just a baby and did not know what was happening. Another good example is this essay. In this essay, I have referred to the creature as a monster several times but the correct term that I should have been using is creature. This shows how people can misinterpret things that they do not understand fully or are afraid of. Also, in the Fifth Child, it is the exact scenario. Yes, society does not accept Ben just because he looks different and thus this obviously makes Ben feel isolated and make him feel as if he is hated. So, yes, society is the root of evil in the books Frankenstein and the Fifth Child because they do not accept the two individuals just because of their appearances.