Victor then goes on to state how something that could be so good, something he would have been famous for, something he deprived himself for has turned out to be a hideous nightmare. The way he describes the fact that he spent two whole years of his life committed to the creation of the monster and he gets nothing but a ‘wretch’ from it makes the reader feel extreme sympathy for Victor and almost angers the reader at the monster for not being of Victors expectations.
As Victor flees from his creature to his bedchambers, he takes the first step in denying the monster of a proper life and friendship. Victor should have embraced the monster or at least stayed in its sights so the monster could feel protected. The way Victor abandons the creature immediately after birth is disturbing to the reader. Shelley had also been left by her mother, although unintentionally, at a very early age and perhaps this is how she feels about not having her true mother stranding over her. Victor is cowardice in this chapter as he runs away from the monster at the first sign of danger and keeps himself in his bedroom. The reader shows feelings of disgust for Victor has he is weak and cannot control his emotions furthermore destroying the creature’s future. The reader starts to sympathise with the monster as he is left as soon as his creator or father sees his strange features.
As Victor is in his bedchambers, he falls asleep due to the ‘lassitude’ he felt. Victor had a restless sleep and horrific dreams. He dreamt that he was reunited with Elizabeth but the dream got horrifically disturbing as Elizabeth turned into Caroline Frankenstein’s corpse. This dream represents the future of Victor now that the monster is created. The dream shows us that Victor has been thinking about his family and maybe now he was thinking about the consequences of his actions. This gives the reader the impression that Victor will lose everyone he loves when they could have been saved if he did not create the monster. This is an archetypal gothic horror convention as it mixes love with horror: ‘embracing Elizabeth’ and ’corpse of my dead mother’. The way that the monster is hovering over Victor only confirms the fact that the monster will cause misery in Victor’s life. Although the way the monster is grinning at Victor is quite amusing as the reader imagines a monstrous newborn baby smiling and ‘muttering’ at his father.
Victor spends the night ‘watching’ outside as he is too frightful to go in. Victor takes a walk to the coach station and finds that Clerval was at Ingolstadt. Victor, after severing himself from almost all social connections’ he is deeply gladdened to see his old friend and feels after a long time ‘calm and serene joy’. Clerval comments on Victors lacking looks and enquires the reason for his apparent tiredness. In response to this Victor replies that he has been ‘deeply engaged’ with a project but now he hopes that he is ‘at length free’. The strong irony of this is almost comical to the reader as the reading knows of Victors ‘toils’ and the consequences of his actions.
When Victor gives details of his illness, this is when the reader comes to realise that Victor did sacrifice his health solely for the creation of the monster. This makes the reader remember how heartbroken Victor was with disappointment and how the ‘beauty of [his] dream vanished’ so quickly. The reader can therefore understand that Victor was so committed to the creature that he could have abandoned it only out of true and pure fear.
Chapter 5 Volume 1 is narrated by Victor Frankenstein and I think this is a very good technique to get the reader to understand and sympathise with the narrator. The reader did not see any of the monster’s feeling about the birth and abandonment from Victor so they obviously do not know how much he is suffering or if he really wanted to trap Victor in the encounter in the bedchamber. I think Mary Shelley persuades the reader to have more positive feelings towards Victor as he is the one who is shown suffering.
Chapter three is narrated completely by the monster, giving us details of his search for love and a caring home. The monster the reader sees in this chapter is fierce but vulnerable. This is because the monster has already killed but he only did it as a result of the hostility he received from the humans in return for his compassion and love.
The monster went through so many struggles to get to where he is today: talking, walking and understanding. He had to learn the ways of life and survival all by himself and he also had to endure his facial appearance through all of his struggles. The monster ‘saw, felt, heard and smelt at the same time’; he had to learn how to use each of his senses without the help of his father/creator. The way Mary Shelley puts each of the monster’s struggles in order and in detail give the reader a deep inside into the monster’s life and the reader feels a lot of sympathy for the monster and anger at Victor for outing him through this. Also, Shelley links the struggles of the monster to her own self; Shelley’s mother had died very early on in her life, abandoning her, denying her of what only a birth mother could give, pure love and understanding and the teachings only a mother could give .Mary Shelley had to compromise and settle for someone other than her birth mother to raise and teach her. In the same way, the monster also had to settle for the cottagers instead of Victor to give him knowledge and he was also denied of the love and understanding only a birth parent could give.
The reaction of the first human other than Frankenstein seeing the monster was very much filled with fear and maybe disgust. The monster was suffering from the cold and he was looking for a place where he could sleep in warmth. The discovery of the hut elated the monster but on entering he saw that there is an old man sitting by the fire. On seeing the monster the man ‘ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable’ This shows the reader that the monster was feared or hated by everybody and he would never leave a normal life, Victor wasn’t the only one who was afraid. The reader feels a sort of self disgust for the human’s behaviour and it makes the reader wonder what their reaction would be like to the monster. The reader feels the anguish that the monster going through and sympathises with him. The old man’s behaviour illustrated that human were capable of extraordinary things sometimes, things that would usually seem unlikely. Maybe this gave the monster hope as someday, someone, might bear his looks and observe what kind of a person he is on the inside. This is the sort of way that Mary Shelley was looked upon in her lifetime as she had eloped with a married man and father. It was unacceptable in the time in which it happened and Mary Shelley probably got hostile treatment from those around her.
The monster then goes on to explain that he had been residing in a pig-sty that was partially attached to a cottage. The cottagers were poverty stricken people however their manners toward each other were gentle and caring, therefore the monster’s bewilderment was apparent at first, when he could not understand how people could be polite and caring towards each other. This is when the monster also starts to develop positive feelings such as ‘pleasure’ and the reader start to see the real absence of knowledge the monster has, as he ‘knew nothing of the science of words or letters’ and encountered feelings he had ‘never before experienced’. This shows the reader what the absence of a guardian and guide, Victor, did to the creature and in turn this makes the reader feel pity for the monster, almost making the reader feel protective over the creature against the brutality of humans. Also, throughout the chapter the creature presented his desire to meet the cottagers but the constant violent treatment of the human species had stopped him from doing so, as he was afraid to go near another and get trampled upon again. The way the chapter ends, gives the reader the impression that the creature wanted to be like the cottagers, almost as if he has decided to copy and cottagers and their daily routine. This shows the reader how desperate the monster is for love and affection, as he is willing to dedicate is time to observing the cottagers.
Throughout the novel the mood is very dark and sometimes very depressing furthermore there are only a few points that actually make the reader feel the brightened mood. The most light and cheerful mood was in the beginning of the book when Victor was telling us about his childhood plus he also tells us his love for his family and Elizabeth. This is the archetypal gothic horror convention as it involves both horror and romance.
Mary Shelley has succeeded in directing the reader’s feelings towards the monster because of the negativity she has portrayed from Victor toward the monster and the anguish the monster has to go through repeatedly just to get a place to sleep.