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Affective science is the study of emotion and how it inadvertently affects every decision a person makes. While the study of something that cannot be seen even on a cellular level is often controversial, individuals experience the direct correlation emotions have on decisions every day. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the emotion of misery progresses throughout the novel until it is all that remains. It is through this progression that the readers see that the factors that contribute most to misery are: living without a being that provides support and living without the acceptance of others.
Whether an individual chooses to live without a significant other or is never given the chance, not having that relationship largely contributes to a
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miserable existence. Victor Frankenstein's decision to isolate himself from his future wife instead of sharing his fears with her is the reason he experiences such misfortune. When Victor is back in his lab after hearing the monster's request, he wonders if he can "enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging on [his] neck and bowing [him] to the ground" (Shelley, p. 155) and instead comes to the conclusion that he will "perform [his] engagement before [knowing] the delight of a union" (Shelley, p. 155). Here, Victor struggles to come to a decision about whether he should marry Elizabeth, but his struggle mainly focuses on his own thoughts and emotions. Ultimately, when he chooses to let his work consume him instead of stopping to consider Elizabeth's feelings about the situation, he gives her no chance to support him emotionally. Instead, he experiences the same anxiety and isolation as he did at the beginning of the novel, but this time, he is the reason for the monster's misery as well. The monster is forced to live without a mate and in solitude because of the lack of others of his kind, which is the cause of his suffering. When Victor and the monster meet for the first time, the monster explains that: If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude [...] and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded (Shelley, 150). Despite being an outcast to society, the monster is able to appreciate and crave a relationship that Victor pushes aside. Unfortunately, even though the monster understands how much a wife would contribute to the happiness that he lacks, he is the only creature of his kind and cannot find a mate elsewhere. Due to his isolation, the monster cannot contain his grief and channels it through violent acts, which only makes him that much more unhappy. Although circumstances differ, in the end, both parties endure the misery that occurs as a result of not having an individual in their lives that can support them emotionally. A person that constantly faces the rejection of his or her peers is unable to draw the strength and support from others needed to counteract misery.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the central reason that Victor creates the monster—the literal embodiment of his misery—is due to the rejection that he faces during his teenage years. During the beginning of Victor's journey in the study of natural philosophy, his Father dismisses his excitement by stating, "'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash'" (Shelley, 28). When looking back on his Father's rejection, Victor states …show more content…
that: If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded [...] I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin (Shelley, p. 28). Alphonse Frankenstein is not the only one that rejects Victor’s interests; rather, upon first meeting Victor and realizing that he studies ancient principles, Professor M.
Krempe simply states that “every instant that [he] wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost” (Shelley, p. 35). At the age of thirteen, Victor already faces rejection from two very important figures in his life. These rejections teach Victor that confiding in others only results in embarrassment, and so he begins to internalize all of his aspirations and emotions to the point where it makes him anxious and unhappy. Also, Victor begins to needlessly crave the acceptance of others, thus, he plans to create a being that will worship him as a God. Unfortunately, what Victor does not realize is that this creation will be the source of all of his misfortune, and if his Father and his professor were only kind enough to realize how powerful the force of rejection is, Victor would never have chosen the path of
misery. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the readers witness how something as simple as the rejection of two individuals lead the character, Victor Frankenstein, down a path of impending misfortune. As he travels down that path, he makes the decision to distance himself from his wife and suffers as a result of that choice, but also chooses to include the monster in a life of misfortune when he refuses to reanimate again. In the end, the battle with misery is a never-ending cycle of decision making. While others are strong in making the right decisions, some may be swayed by factors that largely contribute to their failure.
In Volume 1 and 3 of Frankenstein, Victor’s reason for creating the “monster” changes drastically; however, ultimately leading to the same consequence of suffering and depression. Through this change in Victor, Shelley argues that all humans have an instinctive notation of right from wrong and learn from their mistakes. Victor left his friends and family to go to college; when there, he had no friends and social life. His top and only priority was his schoolwork; he read all he can about the sciences, especially chemistry and anatomy. When finished with his studies, Victor is ready to start his creation when he confirms his proceedings aloud, “Winter, spring, and summer, passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves-sights which before always yielded me supreme delight, so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a close; and now every day shewed me more plainly how well I had succeeded.
In Frankenstein, everyone treats Victor’s creation like a monster, including Frankenstein himself. This leads to the creation accepting that title and going on a murder spree. His creation says “When I reflect on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation” (69). Victor’s creation shows that he did not ask to be created, and his existence is miserable.
With nobody to reason with, Victor makes senseless decisions while he is alone. Victor begins this with his process of creating the monster. Nobody in the right mind would ever dig up graves, but that is just what victor goes and does. Once this creation is finally given life, which Victor has spent two years striving for, Victor foolishly abandons it. Victor comes to his senses to some degree after he brings life to the monster as he states, “‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 43). Had there been companions around Victor during this creation time, perhaps someone would have been able to guide Victor away from creating the “wretch” (Shelley 43) he so hopelessly conceived. As for the monster, he makes fairly good decisions even without guidance from anyone, including Victor, his creator. The monster has the desire to learn and gain knowledge as a genuine individual. As the monster is continuously rejected and shunned by mankind, his natural benevolence turns to malevolence. In his loneliness, the monster wrongly decides to declare “‘everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 126). Say the monster was able to have comrades of some kind around him, he would not have turned to this
As a tragic hero, Victor’s tragedies begin with his overly obsessive thirst for knowledge. Throughout his life, Victor has always been looking for new things to learn in the areas of science and philosophy. He goes so far with his knowledge that he ends up creating a living creature. Victor has extremely high expectations for his creation but is highly disappointed with the outcome. He says, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 35). Frankenstein neglects the creature because of his horrifying looks, which spark the beginning of numerous conflicts and tragedies. At this point, the creature becomes a monster because of Victor’s neglect and irresponsibility. The monster is forced to learn to survive on his own, without anyone or anything to guide him along the way. Plus, the monster’s ugly looks cause society to turn against him, ad...
After bringing life to something seemingly horrible, Victor Frankenstein reveals his personality of avoidance and arrogance. Instead of facing the creature he created, he runs away from the problem. His motivations for the experiment vary, but there is one clear one that he even admits. "The world," he says, "was to me a secret which I desired to divine" (Shelley 18). Victor tells us that he's curious, and more importantly that he's always been this way. Victor has been raised in a very loving family. His father and mother were kind parents who loved all of their children, and even adopted some children. Victor, however, grows up a little indulged and perhaps because of this, he is selfish. He is stubborn and unyielding about many things. For
When the creature, who is Frankenstein’s creation, first observes the cottage family, intense emotion is stirred within it:“I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced,” (Shelley 91). Witnessing the cottage family interact in such an intimate way provokes such complex emotions that the creature is not able to comprehend their nature. These “peculiar” emotions are “overpowering” which show the extent to which they influence the creature. In addition, the creature describes such sensations as a “mixture of pain and pleasure” referring to a blend of two complex emotions. This is no simple or primitive reaction.
So, when he created Frankenstein “the monster” he turned out to be this grotesque and unnatural creature which was different from what Victor had imagined. However, at the site of looking at his creation, Victor is now spooked by his appearance and immediately turned off by his own creation. For example, in chapter 5 Victor says, “I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, continued a long time traversing my bed chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.” (Page 35). Again, we can see Shelley’s use of Gothic elements infused with the monstrous theme. However, this causes Victor to immediately stray away from the monster because he views his creation as repulsive and upsetting. Which marks the first sign of abandonment that Victor places on his creation. This doesn’t do any justice for Victor because now the monster is trying to assert himself into Victor’s life but yet feels more and more neglected from the absence of love that Victor doesn’t want to give in terms of having a relationship with
Victor is so engulfed by his work that he is unaware of what is going on around him. He “bore onwards [with his work], like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success” and he wants to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world" (Shelley 55). Blinded by his yearning for making new discoveries, Victor thinks that his knowledge of the sciences will be enough for him to be successful. However, he does not understand that in order to create an auspicious relationship between him and his creation, he needs to have knowledge of society as well. Once his creation is animated, Victor is unable to see that all the creature wants is to be loved and accepted. The creature craves the maternal love that Victor denies him. From the beginning, Victor is unable to realize the significance of his creation. He describes how the creature’s “yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath... [and] his hair was of a lustrous black... [and] his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips” (Shelley 58). He immediately focuses on the negative features of his creation, and does not even attempt to learn the positive qualities. If Victor uses more social skills, rather than his knowledge of the sciences to manage his creation, all of the destruction the creation causes could have been
Upon first discovering how to make life, Victor is overwhelmed with excitement and pride, feeling as though he has unlocked the greatest power on earth. His imagination is “too much exalted” by this newfound ability, and thus determines there is no “animal as complex and wonderful as man” for him to attempt as his first creation (Shelley 43). Frankenstein does not contemplate how he will react to or interact with the human he gives life to, or that he has created an extremely twisted parent-child relationship by creating a human from dead bodies. His general lack of concern regarding the consequences of his remarkable yet dangerous power is the root of the rest of the conflict between him and his monster throughout the rest of the novel, and it exemplifies Shelley’s underlying theme that science should not be pushed past morally and psychologically safe boundaries.
Victor, who is described as a beautiful man with no apparent flaws. He created another life and kept it a secret until the monster actually came to life. Mary Shelley knew what she was doing because she wanted to portray Victor as being a loyal and caring person. Shelley wanted us to view victor as the one who does not need to take responsibility for their actions but it all catches up with him in the end. Victor is selfish and doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, or his creation. Victor states, “I had desired it with and ardor that far exceeded moderation: But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley, Kindle) When reading this quote, you can see that he does not care anything about the monster after it has come to life. He spent all that time on it for him to judge the monster by its appearance instead of treating his creation like a child and teaching him everything he needs to know. Now all he knows is neglect and
This evolution of Victor’s attitude about the creation occurs during the time immediately following the creation. In these few hours, Victor’s imagination creates an increasingly grotesque image of the creation. This developed condemnation that Victor imposes upon the creation is similar to all of the creation’s other encounters with human beings. This repeated rejection causes the creation to realize that "All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things" (Shelley 65). Eventually, therefore, the creation accepts its role as a monster based solely on the reactions it receives from other human beings.
He toils endlessly in alchemy, spending years alone, tinkering. However, once the Creature is brought to life, Frankenstein is no longer proud of his creation. In fact, he’s appalled by what he’s made and as a result, Frankenstein lives in a perpetual state of unease as the Creature kills those that he loves and terrorizes him. Victor has realized the consequences of playing god. There is irony in Frankenstein’s development, as realized in Victor’s desire to destroy his creation. Frankenstein had spent so much effort to be above human, but his efforts caused him immediate regret and a lifetime of suffering. Victor, if he had known the consequences of what he’s done, would have likely not been driven by his desire to become better than
Victor Frankenstein's upbringing in a perfect society ultimately led to the destruction of his life which coincided with the lives of those emotionally close to him. Victor was raised in an atmosphere where beauty and physical appearance define one's quality of life. This superficial way of life results in a lost sense of morals and selfishness, which in turn produces a lost sense of personal identity. This can cause a feeling of failure and resentment in the later stages of life which, in Victor's case, can be externalized into a form of hatred directed toward himself.
In the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Knowledge is power for Victor Frankenstein. Mary Shelly explains that Dr. Frankenstein’s hunger for the knowledge to create life out of death only leads to Victor’s unfortunate monster. The consequences that Victor Frankenstein experiences from creating a creature from his own madness leads to his death as well as the creature. Mary Shelly explains in her novel Frankenstein that Victor’s need to study life and how it is created is dangerous; furthermore, the abomination that the doctor creates should have never been created; however, the monster that Victor creates is his own monstrosity.
By definition, knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (Merriam-Webster.com). In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley considers knowledge as a “dangerous” factor. The danger of it is proved throughout the actions of the characters Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. The characters all embody the theme of knowledge in different ways. Shelley supports her opinion about knowledge by using references from the Bible and Paradise Lost. She uses these references to show the relationship between God’s Adam and Frankenstein’s creature, and how nothing turns out as great as God’s creation. Mary Shelley’s goal is to teach a lesson on how destructive the desire for knowledge really is.