Nature Vs. Nurture In Frankenstein

The debate of nature vs nurture, or whether genetic makeup or environmental impacts determine the thoughts and actions of a person, is a classic controversy that is also prevalent in Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. In the book, scientist Victor Frankenstein irresponsibly creates a man out of many body parts. He is appalled at the sight of the hideous creature with “yellow skin [that] scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath,” and abandons the monster, leaving it full of hate and a need for revenge (Shelley). Frankenstein’s monster was inclined to be murderous due to a lack of nurture from his creator as opposed to having a malevolent nature in his genes. The lesson to be learned in Frankenstein is that monsters are

created by lack of nurture growing up, not born with intent to kill.
Nature and genetics have some impact on people’s actions, but not as significant of an impact as nurturing and environment do. Psychology professor and researcher Eric Turkheimer discovered that “genes do have important effects on how rich or poor children will be when they grow up, but it’s an effect that’s only visible when children grow up outside of poverty” ("Nature or Nurture"). In other words, though a child may be capable of greatness, his home environment and the way he was raised is the determining factor in how he turns out to be as he grows and matures. “If you have a chaotic environment, kids’ genetic potential doesn’t have a chance to be expressed,” according to Turkheimer (Kirp). In the case of Victor Frankenstein’s monster, though he was crafted with “such infinite pains and care,” he still became a murderous villain due to being “shunned and hated by all mankind” (Shelley).
Nurture functions as the dominant force in a person’s development.

In research done by Eric Turkheimer for Through the Wormhole to study how genes and environment affect how successful a person will be in his or her career, researchers found that living conditions made more difference than a person’s genes or I.Q. According to Turkheimer, “their home environment was by far the most important factor. Their genes seemed to play almost no role at all” ("Nature or Nurture”). Children who grew up in harsh environments, even children with genes to be successful, rarely succeeded. Turkheimer found in his research that “It doesn’t matter what kind of genetic tendencies some of these kids may have had. If they’re raised in a bad enough environment, they’re not going to be able to express them” ("Nature or Nurture”). Other studies besides Turkheimer’s have proved the same thing. Sir Michael Rutter of the University of London states that “It doesn’t really matter whether the heritability of I.Q. is this particular figure or that one. Changing the environment can still make an enormous difference” (Kirp). In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster had no guidance or any contact from his creator after he was brought to life. The environment the monster was raised in mirrors the environment that the children in Turkheimer’s study grew up in. Lack of structure and support, harsh words, and emotional and physical violence all prevent children from growing up into prosperous adults and

cause the monster in the novel to mature to be cruel and vengeful.
In a conversation with Victor, the monster says, “I am malicious because I am miserable” (Shelley). The monster was so miserable because not only was he abandoned by his creator, but he also had to live alone in a cave after all the townspeople shunned him for being different. The monster was hated by all mankind, leaving him with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. When the monster notices a family called the De Laceys living in a small cottage in the woods, he is shocked to see that they had their own hardships and were unhappy. They had a home, food, and companionship. He says, “I saw no cause for their unhappiness; but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched” (Shelley). The monster believed that he was right in thinking that he should be miserable, because if people who had so much more than he had were unhappy, then he, an ugly monster, certainly deserved solitude and wretchedness. The loneliness of the dark cave he was forced to live in caused the monster to be unhappy. Dr. Oliver Davis, a researcher from King’s College London, discovered in a study of 6,759 pairs of twins across the United Kingdom that “there are plenty of things that can affect how [a] particular human genome expresses itself, and one of those things is where [one] grows up” (Collins). The monster’s emotions were expressed violently because of how he was forced by humans to live in exile.
The monster was full of hate because of man, but he also learned the feeling of hate from man. The science of epigenetics, or external modification of genes, includes the idea that “the basis of all behavior is learning and memory” (Powledge). According to Richard Nisbet, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, “intelligence is highly modifiable by the environment” (Blech). Genes are shaped by the environment and everything people know is taught to them. The monster was subject to such abhorrence by everyone he encountered that he only knew how to hate in return. The monster asks Victor, “Shall I respect man when he contemns me?” (Shelley). He has learned to hate those who have treated him badly and to take revenge because the people hate him. He explains to Victor, “I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear” (Shelley). The monster only knew how to be hateful because that’s all he’s ever been around. He learned the behavior, so he was repeating it. Perhaps if he had been treated with love, he would have reciprocated the emotion.
The monster’s loneliness played a big role in his hatred toward mankind.

Not only did he feel contempt because of the way he was treated, but it was also compounded by the extreme feeling of isolation that he had. "Being lonely can produce hyper-reactivity to negative behaviors in other people,” says John Cacioppo, a psychologist who specifically studies the biological effects of loneliness, “so lonely people see those maltreatments as heavier” (Gammon). The monster was alone since the day he was created, so his mind and mental state were undoubtedly damaged, making him more prone to turning his negative feelings into something far worse, like murder. “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses,” laments the monster (Shelley). His lack of relationships made him socially inept, and made it hard for him to think rationally about how to react to negative comments. In the seventeenth chapter of Frankenstein, the monster returns to Victor after living alone in his cave for a while and asks Victor to create a female companion for him to ease his lonesomeness (Shelley). He begs Victor, using the argument that companionship will ease his pain and reduce the hatred he feels for humans: “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” (Shelley). According to John Cacioppo’s findings, the monster would be correct in

saying that having a friend would ease his contempt, but Victor refuses anyway, destroying the female companion he started, and causing the monster to once again murder (Shelley). Had Victor complied, he could have prevented the death of his wife Elizabeth.
It is argued that the monster’s gruesome composition of various pieces of various corpses could be the sole cause of his evil actions, but that would be incorrect. Genetics do play a role in development of personality, but they are not the one determining factor. Eric Turkheimer states that “no behavioral traits are completely inherited” ("The Nature-Nurture Question”). The lack of nurture from Victor, the environment the monster lived in, and the way the townspeople treated the monster all had a significant impact on the monster’s behavior. Another argument against saying that the monster’s genes determined his actions is that the monster was created from many different parts from many different humans: “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials” (Shelley). The monster had varying DNA, and it is unclear who the DNA belonged to originally. If the person who provided the monster’s arm was a cruel person, then perhaps the monster received some of his malicious disposition from him or her. However, there is simply no way of knowing if the original owners of the limbs were good or bad, so it is hard to make the case for nature prevailing as the most important factor in the monster’s, or a human’s, behavior.
In all, though nature has some influence, nurture prevails over nature as the most powerful factor that shapes how a person, or monster, behaves. In many cases, people can become monsters and it is due to their environment and upbringing. Just as in genetics, the “monster” cannot help what he or she becomes because they do not choose to grow up in poverty or with abusive parents, just as someone cannot choose what color skin they have or how tall they are. In a perfect society, perhaps monsters would not exist. However, as long as “Dr. Frankensteins” such as abuse and poverty are in the world, monsters will continue to be created daily, and we should learn how to handle them with love and understanding.