Bravery In Ralph Waldo Emerson's The American Scholar

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” Emerson defines key qualities of a scholar, describing, “Free should the scholar be, -- free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, 'without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.' Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him” (Emerson 1146). In this quote, Emerson defines the scholar as free, in the sense that he must not have any obligations except to his own desires and his own work, and brave such that his logic and reason should rid him of any fears. However, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shelley shows through the actions of the eponymous protagonist and his ultimate end complicate Emerson’s ideas. Shelley undermines

Emerson’s ideas of the necessity of freedom and bravery for a scholar by demonstrating how Victor’s neglect of his obligations and smug bravery lead directly to his downfall.
Shelley first demonstrates how Victor’s conscious neglect of his familial obligations fits into Emerson’s descriptions of a scholar, but complicates this by demonstrating the excessive extent to which Victor regards his own freedom. When Victor is off studying at Geneva, he describes, “I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 41). In this passage, Shelley signifies that Victor knew full well that he should write his father, but instead intentionally ignores him. Furthermore, it can be said that the reason Victor ignores his father is purely because he is a scholar; when he says that he “could not tear [his] thoughts from [his] employment,” Victor selfishly feeds his intellect with his scientific work, and it is this hunger for knowledge that causes him to ignore his familial obligations. Thus, in this passage Victor fits the bill of Emerson’s scholar who has no “hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution” (Emerson 1146). However, Shelley’s language and Victor’s retrospective perspective frame this devotion to work as not noble freedom, but rather as an addiction to Victor’s studies. Instead of the noble scholarly freedom that Emerson suggests, Shelley instead paints scholarly freedom as something “loathsome in itself” and something that “swallowed up every habit of [Victor’s] nature.” Through Victor, Shelley shows how freedom to pursue his desire for scientific inquiry is not so much freedom but an addiction to work that causes Victor to ignore his familial obligations.
Not only does Shelley demonstrate Victor’s neglect of familial obligations, but she also shows that his scholarly freedom makes him neglect parts of himself that are not devoted to science, suggesting that Emerson’s ideas can, in fact, harm the individual. Victor describes, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object…should be completed” (41). Here, Shelley demonstrates that, in Victor’s devotion, he is no longer a whole person: he has shut down the feeling, affectionate part of his brain so that the logical part of his brain can focus fully on his project. As Victor makes a conscious decision to ignore his father, he makes a conscious decision to ignore his feelings entirely; he actively “wished” to shut down all feeling. Shelley here demonstrates the dangers of Emerson’s ideas of scholarly freedom, in that Victor shuts down all desires in light of his scientific pursuits, showing that the desires that “arise out of his own constitution” may not, in fact, be very logical or wise. Similarly, Victor later on describes, “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health” (Shelley 43). Not only is Victor ignoring certain parts of his psyche to focus on his work, but he also ignores the needs of his physical body. Shelley uses Victor’s mental and physical neglect of himself to further complicate Emerson’s ideas and to show the dangers of devoting oneself to science too completely, a point that Emerson conveniently disregards.
To further prove her point, Shelley demonstrates that Victor also neglects his obligations to his own creation, but highlights that Victor almost gave into his creation and instead changed his mind, letting his creation continue to suffer. Through this, Shelley shows that Victor despises the results of his scientific inquiry but takes no responsibility to correct his misdeeds, following the pattern of the unapologetically free scholar that Emerson describes and the ephemerality of his desires. After hearing his creation’s tale, Victor describes, “His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (Shelley 136). In this passage, the feeling Victor is struck with is “strange” in the sense that, after years of independence and scholarly freedom, the idea that he might want to do something for someone other than himself is unfamiliar. Contrasting before when Victor described, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection” (Shelley 41), he now channels his desires briefly towards his own creation, for he “felt a wish to console him” (Shelley 136). However, Victor is so intent on maintaining his independence that he quickly channels his feelings to those of hatred, rather than pity. Even though this creation was born out of the very experiment that Victor chose to so obsessively focus on, once the experiment goes wrong Victor rejects responsibility, a certain type of obligation that apparently does not “arise out of his own constitution” (Emerson 1146). Fitting Emerson’s descriptions of a scholar, Victor clutches on to his freedom at the expense of his own creation. Thus, Shelley demonstrates how Emerson’s ideas can be harmful to not only the individual but also the people around them.
To comment on the dangers of complete lack of obligation and Emerson’s ideas of bravery, Shelley demonstrates that Victor uses bravery to avoid his obligations, and shows how this decision makes him a slave to another type of obligation: revenge.

After he destroys the mate he was creating for his monster, Victor declares, “Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words” (Shelley 158). Here, Victor takes his independence a step further and denies two obligations: the obligation to fulfill the promise he made, and his fatherly obligation to the being he created. Addition, this time when Victor denies his obligations, he does it not out of addiction to his work or disgust at his creation, but through his new-found bravery. Thus, Victor also falls in line with Emerson’s discussion of a true scholar being brave, “for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him” (Emerson 1146). However, Shelley interestingly ties the ideas of a scholar being free and brave together by having Victor’s bravery arise out of his desire to be free. Victor maintains, “I am no coward to bend beneath words” (Shelley 158); however, it was the creature’s words -- his skillful use of ethos, pathos, and logos -- that caused Victor to agree to his terms in the first place. Thus, here Victor does not “bend beneath words” not because he is brave but because his desire to be free outweighs his fear of the creature. Shelley proposes that the bravery of the scholar comes not from his ability to but fear behind him for the good of learning, as Emerson suggests, but rather bravery comes from his crude obsession with his own freedom. Shelley shows that this refusal of obligation puts the nail in Victor’s coffin: the breaking of this promise causes the creature to murder first his best friend and then his wife. After this tragedy occurs, Victor describes, “Liberty, however,

had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge” (PAGE). As Victor vows to enact revenge on his creation, he shows that liberty had been a useless gift to him because he had wasted it on selfish desires and used it as an excuse to ignore all obligations, as Emerson’s scholar would. Shelley paints a tragic ending for a man who so long ignored his obligations, but in the end does not realize his folly until he is tangled up in the obligation to get revenge on his own creation, thus forever abandoning his scholarly pursuits.
Throughout the novel, Victor exemplifies Emerson’s ideas of the scholar’s freedom by ignoring his obligations to his family, himself, his creation, and his promises in order to pursue his own desires. However, through Victor Shelley undermines Emerson’s ideas of freedom and bravery through the terrible consequences of Victor’s actions: namely, the creation of a creature who murders everyone he loves and awakens in Victor an unending desire for revenge, upon which Victor realizes too late that he had wasted his own freedom. In the flourishing age of learning and reason that was the Enlightenment, though Emerson argues for freedom and bravery in the pursuit of learning, Shelley shows that without checks and balances this freedom can be taken so far as to damage the scholar and terminate the scholar’s quest for knowledge indefinitely.