‘Frankenstein’ can be read as a tale of what happens when a man tries to create a child without a woman. It can, however, also be read as an account of a woman's anxieties and insecurities about her own creative and reproductive capabilities. The story of explains a woman's emotions that she may experience through pregnancy and their related fears. Mary Shelley, in the development and education of the monster, discusses child development and education and how the nurturing of a loving parent is extremely important in the moral development of an individual. Through ‘Frankenstein’, Mary Shelley examines her own fears and thoughts about pregnancy, childbirth, and child development. Pregnancy and childbirth, as well as death, was an integral part of Mary Shelley's young adult life. She had four children and a miscarriage that almost killed her. This was all before the age of twenty-five. Only one of her children, Percy Florence, survived to adulthood and outlived her.
Chapter 5 is about the birth of the monster: One stormy night, after months of labour, victor completes his creation. However, when he brings it to life, its awful appearance horrifies him. He rushes to the next room and tries to sleep, but he is troubled by nightmares about Elizabeth and his mother’s corpse. He wakes to discover the monster looming over his bed with a grotesque smile and rushes out of the house. He spends the night pacing in his courtyard. The next morning, he goes walking in the town of Ingolstadt, frantically voiding a return to his now haunted apartment. As he walks by the town inn, Victor comes across his friend Henry Clerval, who has just arrived to begin studying at the university. Delighted to see Henry, he reminds him of his family life after so many months of isolation and ill health. They go back to Victor’s apartment; victor enters first and is relived to find no sign of the monster. But, Weakened by months of work and the shock at the horrific being he has created, he immediately falls ill with a nervous fever that lasts several months. Henry nurses him back to health and, when Victor has recovered, gives him a letter from Elizabeth that had arrived during his illness.
In the first paragraph we arrive at a climax of horror as Victor describes the anxious moment he has been anticipating two years for. With the way Shelley has created atmosphere of dull misery and dreariness, we can guess that victor has intense feelings. The animation of the creature is set on a dull and ‘dreary’ night of November. ‘The rain pattered dismally’; the ‘candle was nearly burnt out’ and there was a ‘glimmer of the half-extinguished light.’ Shelley is using negative descriptive to give this scene sense of horror that victor is feeling. This is an appropriately bleak and depressing scene for the opening of the ‘dull yellow eye’ of the creature. This atmosphere is used to open this paragraph to set the horror and anxiousness that the creature is going to create.
In the opening paragraph Shelley refers to ‘infuse a spark to the lifeless thing.’ Here she is probably going on about galvanism, which is how the creature was brought to life in ‘Frankenstein’. Shelley was living in an age of scientific developments, and so her ideas would have been experiments and scientific debates of her time. Many scientists then looked to chemistry to give them the secrets of life, and Shelley would have done research on these matters. A scientist called, luigi Galvani believed that there was a different form of electricity produced by lightning, and the brain; contained in animals. This vital force was called galvanism’, which made muscles move. Experiments were done on galvanism, wires would be attached to the a human body and the corpse began to move, making it look as thought the body has been brought back to life. Shelley used this experiment in ‘Frankenstein’ to bring the creature to life.
In the second paragraph Victor goes on to describes the creature’s appearance and his feelings towards this. Its like Victor has given birth and his new creature is his newborn child, frequently jaundiced, misshapeden, shrivelled, and often a great disappointment to the unprepared parent.
‘His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God!’
Victor is immediately horrified by the overall ‘wretch’ he has created, it’s a ‘catastrophe’.
Victor is repelled and unable to look beyond the physical ugliness.
‘His teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriance’s only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun whit sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.’
Victor saw beauty in the body parts when they were separate but hated the overall appearance.
Victor is horrified by the ‘wretch’ he had created. He calls his creation a number of names,
‘Creature, Miserable monster, Demoniacal corpse, wretch.’
These names are negative names to be called, showing that Victor has a very negative attitude, thoughts and feelings towards his creation. Victor runs away, as he so often tries to run away from troubles, and attempts to forget in his sleep. But, Victor is ‘disturbed by the wildest dreams’, dreams that would frighten him.
‘I startled from my sleep in horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed.’
Victor is obviously haughtd by this creature, but he doesn’t give the creature a chance.
‘His jaw opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a gin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me.’
This took place in Victor’s bedroom. The first thing the creature desires are contact and affection, this remain his primary needs, as he stretches one arm towards Victor.
This may seem touching, but still Victor ‘escaped and rushed down stairs, and took refuge in the courtyard; where he remained for the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound.’ At this point Victors creation maybe feeling rejected therefore leading to the bad consequences that the creation is responsible later in the novel. Victor repeatedly misinterprets the creature’s expressions, seeing aggression where we see pleasure, affection, or a desire to please. Therefore Victor is selfish and only sees things from his point of view, not from his creations point of view and so is not the most reliable of narrators. As a result the reader may question what Frankenstein tells elsewhere in the novel about his creation. It seems to be the physical ugliness of the creature to which Victor reacts to. Here Shelley could be using the monster to criticise society and their reactions to outward appearance and people who appear different.
What happens in rest of novel…about when he tries to be nice but people react negatively because of his appearance…
In victor’s dream of the monster, Shelley may be encouraging us to consider the possible connections between ream and reality and opens up several possible layers of interpretation. The dream may be suggesting that in order of bringing the monster to life is equivalent to killing Elizabeth, in this way, not when Elizabeth changes into a corpse, the dream is prophetic. This is because victor has just given ‘birth’ by himself and usurped the role of woman, made her unnecessary. His ‘dream’ of finding the secret of life has effectively ‘killed’ the mother.
These interpretations indicate the potential results of the creation. Dreams allow things that are normally kept buried come to the surface; this might be unacceptable desires or feelings which we are unable to face.
In the time of 1816 it was a real crime, so God maybe punishing victor for interfering with nature.
‘Sometimes my pulse would beat so quickly and hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; others, I nearly sank to the ground with horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were no become a hell to me.’
This is one of the themes of the novel: angers of man interfering with nature and god, or dangers of scientific knowledge used incorrectly.
As victor is walking by the town inn, Victor comes across his friends Henry Clerval, who has arrived to study at the same collage as victor, Henrys father has let him come at last.
There is irony in Henry speech.
‘He has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.’
Henry sees knowledge as a good thing but Victor’s use of scientific knowledge leads to tragedy. Also, Henry is one of the people who later die as a result of Frankenstein’s use of this knowledge.
Henry saves Victor, but later is murdered by his creation. This tells us a lot about Henry’s appearance throughout this chapter. Henry is willing to spend months of hard labour nursing Victor back to health and treats Victor in great respect, but yet victor does not treat his family at all that well.
Victor does not tell Henry anything about what he has done. This would influence the reader attitude to Victor to the rest of the novel in a way…. This gives the rest of the novel a theme of secrecy. Human nature and secrecy…
This chapter is the turning point to the novel or other words were it all happens; from Victor being excited with solving the secret of life to being horrified by his creation……
