Professor Margo Gariepy
“Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings.” –Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the story of three individuals and their search forplace in the society of 18th century Europe. It is the story of Robert Walton, explorer and expedition leader; of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist pushing the boundaries of knowledge; and of his tormented creation, who struggles for acceptance in a world to which he can never belong. As we will see, in these narrators Mary Shelley has reflected three faces of individualism which characterize the changing Romantic philosophy of her time.
Walton is a young man of privilege and promise. He yearns to lead an expedition into the unchartered waters of the Arctic, but his father has forbidden him the means to pursue this folly. He complains bitterly to his sister: “… do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path” (3).
A fortuitous legacy frees him to launch his ill-fated expedition, and he sets off on his chivalric quest. Between Walton and Victor Frankenstein their is a passionate bond; Walton sees in Victor the same Romantically heroic role he assumes himself. They are brothers, sharing an obsession which separates them from all others.
Frankenstein has pushed the limits of science. He has effected “animation upon lifeless matter” (31) and created a loathsome monster. Victor speaks of the brainstorm which has disclosed the secret to life: “…I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect ….I was surprised, that among so many men of genius who had directed their enquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (31). Later in the novel he tells Walton, “… I believed myself destined for some great enterprise…. [Sentiment] of the worth of my nature supported me, when others would have been oppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures” (156-57). Here Victor is echoing a prevailing sentiment of the Romantic hero, a man whose self-sacrifice will benefit the greater good. The benighted Creature is the third narrator, expressing a wholly different face of individualism. He is “the noble savage.”
Without experience of the world, the Creature is innocent and benign. However, as soon as he experiences society, he is viciously abused: “…children shrieked …. women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones, … I escaped” (74). Hiding near a cottage in the woods, the Creature awakens to his senses and develops resources of intelligence and fortitude. He adopts the language and manners of the people living nearby. He steals into their home to borrow the works of Milton, Plutarch, and Goethe, and he takes on the emotions and values he finds therein. He delights in the affection and compassion he observes among the family and longs to make himself known to them. Still, he is wary. He says, “… I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet … strangely unlike …. I sympathised with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none …. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? “(91) He continues: “… I was wretched, helpless, and alone. [And] when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (92).
When he encounters Victor again, he turns on him with hellish fury. He rages: “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance …. I am solitary and abhorred” (93). Maddened by the prospects of wandering about to be hunted and abused, the pitiable outcast entreats Victor to create for him a companion.
“What I ask of you is reasonable …,” he implores; “I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; … it shall content me… (105). But he finds scant sympathy in Victor. “I swear to you,” vows the Creature, “by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighbourhood of man, and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker” (106).
The poignant argument at last persuades Victor, and he sets about his loathsome task. But when he has finished, the horror of what he has done overcomes him, and he destroys the female he has made. Thus, the Creature is betrayed again by the humanity he has relied upon for protection and compassion, and he enacts his terrible revenge — he will destroy every one that Victor loves.
Thus we see that the three narratives of the novel portray three faces of the Romantic individual. The first two are true Romantic heroes – individualists who stake a claim on posterity; whose arrogance is grounded in the privilege of their class and the limitless opportunity of the age. But the third is a perversion of them; he is the anti-hero, the pariah. He is the embodiment of a frustrated underclass; seduced by Romantic ideals of equality and brotherhood — and betrayed by them — he exacts his inexorable revenge.