Victor Frankenstein: Product of His Upbringing

The practice of criticizing literature through psychoanalysis centers around Freud’s belief that authors, readers, and even characters are motivated by unconscious yet controlling desires. These desires are filtered, made to be as societally acceptable as possible, and rationalized by their keeper’s mind all while keeping the original motives secreted away within the unconscious. Since filtering has disguised the desires, literary criticism is utilized in order to find that which has been unconsciously chosen as acceptable representations for them. The critic then deciphers aspects of the characters, like dreams, personal relationships, sexual habits (or lack thereof), or obsessions. Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through a psychoanalytic lens, it is apparent that the death of Victor’s mother combined with his quick, solitary departure to parts unknown brought to life the damning aspects of the dependent yet self-involved personality his upbringing instilled within him.

Though “[Victor’s] parents were indulgent, and [his] companions amiable,” making up a “domestic circle, from which care and pain seemed for ever banished,” he most unfortunately comes to know that “[his] life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic,” to his own disadvantage (Shelley 52; 56; 60). Victor admits “[n]o youth could have passed more happily than [his],” without any but the most superficial of arguments, upsets, and tragedies (Shelley 52). These small upsets which, occurring in childhood, are what prepare children for the ordeals they will one day face alone. He knows nothing of loneliness, want, sacrifice, or mourning. He also does not develop the requisite social skills to meet with those outside the members of his family. Even...

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...has had to leave the cluster for any length of time is his dearest friend, Clerval. Victor even lets Walton know that the family is “never completely happy when Clerval was absent.” (Shelley 52). Because of his overt dependence on his family, the other complications that accompany Victor’s departure are simply too much. To the detriment of all else, he ceases to respond to anything but that which is familiar to him, his beloved and stalwart natural philosophy. He continues along the path his parents pave for him even if it is paved through the graves of the recently deceased. Because of his indulgent and insulated childhood, Victor Frankenstein damningly lacks the desirous amount of humanity long before his progeny comes to take his first breath.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. Second ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Apple iBook.