The De Lacey family, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, are first introduced to the monster when he observes them through a crack in the wall. Agatha, the name of the De Lacey girl, means goodness in Greek, where as her brother’s name, Felix, means happiness in Latin (CITATION?). With this, Shelley shows that the monster will develop ideas about these concepts through watching the family. From them, the monster is able to learn how to speak, to read, and most importantly, experiences social interactions for the first time, furthering the monster’s desire for companionship as well as developing him socially and psychologically. Through the De Lacey’s, their background story, and their interactions and relationship with the monster, Mary Shelley …show more content…
displays the social implications of being an outsider, and criticizes society for its rejection of such outsiders. The initial function of the De Lacey family for Shelley’s Frankenstein appears to be to educate the monster. However, this education then prompts the monster’s social desires.
In “So Guided by a Silken Cord,” Adam Komisaruk explains how, as the monster watches the De Lacey family, especially once they begin teaching Safie their language, “the creature’s first lessons in western civilization are also Safie’s;” thus, the monster becomes more eloquent and gains the initial desire to become a part of their community, while establishing a connection with Safie (Komisaruk,428). From this, the De Lacey’s also function to develop the monster’s social abilities and awareness as well as provide the monster with a person to parallel to himself. Colene Bentley, in “Family, Humanity, Polity: Theorizing the Basis and Boundaries of Political Community in Frankenstein” explains, “while observing the family’s activities through a chink in the hovel wall, the creature’s critical faculties become refined” (Bentley 328). Through this …show more content…
refinement, the monster becomes increasingly aware of his loneliness and furthers his social desires to become a part of a family or community, allowing Shelley to introduce the topic of social issues. It also is described by Shun-Liang Chao in "Education as a Pharmakon in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein how the “monster’s desire to master human language arises from his aspiration to be accepted and loved by the De Lacey family” (Chao, 224). Therefore, it can be seen how Shelley employs the De Lacey family to develop the monster intellectually and promote his desire for companionship. When examining the function of the De Lacey family, Chao explains, “the encounter [with the De Lacey family] kindles his desire to join human society” (Chao, 224). Here, the De Lacey family also highlights the loneliness of the monster, as he has no companion, no one to sympathize with him. Through the De Lacey family, the monster learns basic social interactions, which lead to him learning nuances of social functioning. Therefore, Shelley’s function for De Lacey’s as explained by Bentley, can be seen “foremost [as] a narrative of his social-psychological development in relation to the company of cottagers” (Bentley, 327). So, Shelley uses the De Lacey family to educate the monster, so that he can become cognizant of social interactions, instigating his desire to become a part of a community as well as highlighting his isolation and loneliness. With the monster’s new insight into social interactions, Shelley is able to use him and his relationship with the De Lacey family to criticize the concept of sympathy and sympathetic action. The monster's first experience with sympathy and sympathetic feeling is through the De Lacey family. As the monster learns of acts of sympathy, such as Felix aiding Safie’s father, Shelley uses the monster’s new insight to criticize the underlying concept of sympathy. In "Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," Jeanne Britton claims “the story of the cottagers tells of the dangers, rather than the limits, of sympathy,” as it is shown that Felix was punished and exiled for showing sympathy to Safie’s father, who ultimately betrayed him (Britton, 17). Therefore, the De Lacey’s, according to Britton, “reflect anxieties about sympathy's social dangers while pointing to its potential to generate narrative” (Britton, 17). Although the monster sympathizes with Safie, as there are many parallels in their experiences including loneliness and betrayal of a parent, “there is no reciprocity in the monster's experience of her” and “fails in actual experience,” yet “succeeds in the production of an appropriative narrative” (Britton, 18). From this, Shelley has used the De Lacey’s connection to Safie to again show the dangers of sympathy, as the monster deeply sympathizes with her, yet is ultimately scorned by her and the rest of the De Lacey family. Since the monster also gains a deeper understanding and desire for social interaction though the De Lacey family and his education, he is able to put his sympathetic feelings into action. Bentley further describes this by explaining how “scenes with the De Lacey’s demonstrate the monster’s capacity to transform his manifold perceptions of group dynamics into meaningful social action” (Bentley, 329). Such actions include the monster aiding their family in their daily chores and choosing to no longer steal food from them, once he realizes there are limited with their resources. However, “their community of cultivated affection does not have the resources necessary even to begin to deal with strangers, let alone perceive or account for their own discriminatory treatment of them” (Bentley, 336). Consequently, the De Lacey’s reaction to the sympathetic actions of the monster are negative, furthering Shelley’s cautionary tone towards sympathy, as expressed through the De Lacey’s. Shelley also uses the development of the monster’s insight into the nature of humans, through the De Lacey family, to demonstrate how economic status affects social relationships.
The De Lacey’s are of low socioeconomic status, and throughout the monster’s encounter with the De Lacey family, Felix, Safie, and the monster “lament their singularity and long for companionship,” establishing “the principal task the novel sets for its characters [to be] the project of community building, that is, of specifying the basis and boundaries of shared life” (Bentley, 326). This initially demonstrates how low socioeconomic status can decrease social interactions with outsiders, thus making compassion and acceptance towards those outsiders increasingly difficult. Additionally, Shelley, as interpreted by Bentley, “develops a theory of political community,” with the story of Safie’s father and the exile of Felix and the De Lacey family. (Bentley, 326). After the betrayal, where this political community was put above human ties, the De Lacey family is increasingly likely to become deterred from accepting people outside of their family. The De Lacey's “violent aversion to the benevolent stranger in their midst suggests that an antisocial impulse is bound up with their domestic bliss;” Komisaruk theorizes, “Shelley links this tendency carefully to their socioeconomic circumstances” (Komisaruk, 432). With this, Shelley uses the De Lacey family to demonstrate how their low socioeconomic
status, as well as their previous betrayal, has greatly decreased the family’s overall compassion towards outsiders. Shelley, therefore, “uses family unions and the creature’s status as an outsider to think through the problems of valuing filiation, sentiment, and heredity as the basis of political commonality” (Bentley, 328). With this, she is able to comment on the social nature of humans, and criticize their inability to seek others outside of their own community. From this, Shelley utilizes the De Lacey family to “challenge the justice of privileging relations of blood and fellow-feeling over other ties of solidarity” (Bentley, 334). That is, Shelley uses the De Lacey family to criticize the concept of rejecting others simply because they are not a part of their familial unit or community. This is again shown as, “wanting to join it [the De Lacey family], the creature seeks membership in a particular group of people rather than membership in the universe of humanity” (Bentley, 331). Here, Shelley’s criticism of seeking a specific community or group over humanity as a whole. Thus, Shelley utilizes the De Lacey family and their connection to Safie and the monster to demonstrate how socioeconomic circumstance influence social ties, as well as critique the social ideas present in the society of her time. De Lacey’s, although seemingly only advancing monsters development, demonstrate the social climate of Mary Shelley’s time and her criticisms about the economical and political influences. With the De Lacey family, Shelley was able to develop the monster. From this development, Shelley uses the monster in conjunction with the De Lacey family to highlight social issues such as the dangers of sympathetic action and the exclusivity of human nature. Although the De Lacey’s, seemingly, only function to educate the monster, their story and their aiding in the psychological and social development of the monster allow Shelley to comment on and criticize the social climate of her time period.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley introduces the change from good to evil with the attention that guardians give a child. William Crisman, in his critique of Mary Shelley’s work, identifies the “sibling rivalry” between Victor and the rest of his family. Crisman remarks that Victor feels as if he is the most important person in his parents’ lives, since he was Alphonse’s and Caroline’s only child. The Frankensteins adopt Elizabeth and Victor sarcastically remarks that he has a happy childhood. This prompts Victor starts to read essays about alchemy and study natural science. Anne Mellor, another critic of Frankenstein, proposes that Frankenstein’s creature was born a good person and society’s reaction to him caused him to turn evil. Victor’s makes the creature in his own perception of beauty, and his perception of beauty was made during a time in his life when he had secluded himself from his family and friends. He perceived the monster as “Beautiful!”, but Victor unknowingly expressed the evil in himself, caused by secluding himself from everybody, onto the creature (60). In this way, the creature is Victor’s evil mirrored onto a body. The expression of Victor onto the monster makes the townspeople repulsed by the creature. The theory of the “alter ego” coincides with Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry (Mellor). Mary Shelley conveys that through Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry, Victor isolates himself from society. Mellor describes the isolation during his creation of his creature leads to him giving the creature false beauty that causes Victor to abandon him and society to reject him.
The classic theme of perversion of family is a major component in Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein comes from a good family but in his adult life he longs for a new companion this is mainly found in the Creature and Elizabeth. The development for the need for the Creature starts when he falls in love with knowledge and is furthered when he leaves to study. In his child hood he has “Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to stat those facts which led to my predilection for that science”(Shelley 36). This passion develops into his obsession in his adult life when he gains more accesses to knowledge and equipment. Then it climaxes with start of the creation of the Creature because his accesses to bodies and tools. (quote Intro) “I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination… it easily conceived that my progress was rapid”(48). His description of the creation makes it seem like he is mothering a child into birth. He distorts the sanity of child birth by creating a human in a lab. This also makes him the mother and father of the Creature. (quote intro) “When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it… my first success to permit me doubt of my ability to give live…”(51). This illustrates his power that he has that was never meant to be any humans. With the successful test my can create life, strengthens his bond with this impending birth of Creature, who embodies all of his scientific achievement. (quote Intro) “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to from?” (55). Frankenstein shuns his own creation, whom he should be the loving parents of. The culmination of all of Frankenstein’s education led to creation his own companionship; he can not bear to see his hideous creation.
As the monster carries on with his life, he understands that he is not in control of his future, and in his mind, the De Lacey family are, "Superior beings who would be the arbiters of my future destiny" (Shelley 115). He has acknowledged his disengagement and comprehends his dismissal, which compels the readers to feel pity and remorse for the Creature, inevitably making his fall into abhorrence more sensational and shocking. " When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me. I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge." (Shelley
Shelley chooses to highlight the psychological damage than can occur from continual isolation. Unlike his creator, Victor Frankenstein the creature’s isolation is not self imposed, rather he craves affection and friendship. The creature suffers two rejections in this novel firstly from Victor and secondly from the De Lacey family. This second rejection is far more painful because from afar the creature feels like he has become a part of their family; he merely knows Victor as his creator but nothing else, there is no time for them to create a paternal bond .The De Lacey’s are able to provide the Creature with skills that Victor never did. From them, he learns how to read and write , countless times in the novel we see the creature’s benevolence; as he tries to help the poverty stricken De Lacey’s “I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist their labours.” However when he tries to initiate contact they treat him with violence “Who can describe their horror… Agatha fainted... Felix darted forward… in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and with supernatural force tore me from his father...” The repetition of active verbs such as “fainted” are able to quicken the pace and builds the suspense of the events that are carried out. The noun “fury” suggests an idea of uncontrollable rage and passion, Felix reacts on instinct
A child's first steps are taken in the home. These experiences shape their existence for the rest of their lives. Jean Hall says that “The family may help the child grow up...loving...or a tyrant”. This fact holds ground in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as Victor and Elizabeth's childhood and the Creatures “childhood” are vastly different, which push them down very unlike paths. These differences are made so to connect the book to Mary Shelley's overall messages she wants to articulate about: Society's emphasis on wealth and appearance, and Nature vs Nurture.
Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, has captured people’s attention since it was first written. People often wonder how much of Mary Shelley’s life is documented in her novel. From the theme of parental abandonment, to the theme of life and death in the novel, literary scholars have been able to find similarities between Frankenstein and Shelley’s life. The Journal of Religion and Health, the Journal of Analytical Psychology, and the Modern Psychoanalysis discuss the different connections between Shelley’s life and Frankenstein. Badalamenti, the author of “ Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?” in the Journal of Religion and Health, primarily discusses the connection between Victor
A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques. Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love. To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”. Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility. Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s inevitable evilness. Victor was not predestined to failure, nor was his creation innately depraved. Rather, it was Victor’s poor “parenting” of his progeny that lead to his creation’s thirst for vindication of his unjust life, in turn leading to the ruin of Victor’s life.
In this essay I will be looking at the differences between the creation of the first and second monster, how Mary Shelley portrays the feelings of Victor and the monster and the different myths and legends that she refers to within the novel. Victor Frankenstein had a wonderful life as a child: 'No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself' (p.39) He was loving and cared deeply for his family, especially for his foster-sister, Elizabeth, who he looked upon as his own, and saw as a 'more than sister' (p.37). Victor always had an 'eager desire to learn' (p.39) about 'the secrets of heaven and earth' (p.39). When he was thirteen years old he started studying the works of Cornelius Agrippa and the fact that his father called it all 'sad trash' (p.40) fuelled his curiosity and enthusiasm and caused him to study even more which was to him, 'the fatal impulse that led to my [his] ruin' (p.41).
“Allure, Authority, and Psychoanalysis” discusses the unconscious wishes, effects, conflicts, anxieties, and fantasies within “Frankenstein.” The absence of strong female characters in “Frankenstein” suggests the idea of Victor’s desire to create life without the female. This desire possibly stems from Victor’s attempt to compensate for the lack of a penis or, similarly, from the fear of female sexuality. Victor’s strong desire for maternal love is transferred to Elizabeth, the orphan taken into the Frankenstein family. This idea is then reincarnated in the form of a monster which leads to the conclusion that Mary Shelley felt like an abandoned child who is reflected in the rage of the monster.
As Victor Frankenstein recounts his informative tale to a seafaring Robert Walton, he makes it known that he was a child of nobility; however it is sadly transparent that, combined with insufficient parenting, Victor’s rare perspective on life pushes him towards a lifestyle of conditional love. Children are considered symbolic of innocence, but as a child Victor’s arrogance was fueled by his parents. With his family being “one of the most distinguished of the republic,”(Shelley 17), Victor’s parents saw him as their “plaything and their idol, and something better-their child, the innocent and helpless Creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me,”(19). “The Social Order vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley's Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein Sylvia Bowerbank.” Bowerbank, "The Social Order vs. the Wretch", knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/bower.html.
Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s radical challenges to society’s structure and her own, and indeed her husband’s views as Romantics. By considering these vital influences on the text, we can see that in Shelley’s construction of the meaning in Frankenstein she encourages a life led as a challenge to dominant views.
The idea for the novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to her one night when she was staying in the company of what has been called ‘her male coterie’, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley’s whole life seems to have been heavily influenced by men. She idolised her father, William Godwyn, and appears to have spent a good part of her life trying very hard to impress both him and her husband. There seems to have been a distinct lack of female influence, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having died weeks after her birth, being replaced by a neglectful step-mother. These aspects of her life are perhaps evident in her novel. The characters and plot of Frankenstein were perhaps influenced by Shelley’s conflicting feelings about the predominately masculine circle which surrounded her, and perhaps the many masculine traits that we see in novel were based upon those of the male figures in Shelley’s own life. In this essay I will attempt to show some of these traits.
Although Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre are comparatively different, the characters are delicately crafted to unfold a captivating theme throughout each novel which embodies the idea of the social outcast. The Monster and Jane Eyre struggle through exile due to an inability to fit into the social norms presented by the era. The characters embark on a journey while coping with alienation and a longing for domesticity which proves to be intertwined with challenges. Character, developed as social outcasts are appealing and sympathized with by readers because of their determination to reach a level of happiness. The voyage toward domesticity, away from the exile of society which Jane Eyre and The Monster embark on
From the beginning of time in history, women have always been portrayed as and seen as the submissive sex. Women especially during the time period of the 1800s were characterized as passive, disposable, and serving an utilitarian function. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prime example displaying the depiction of women. The women in Frankenstein represent the treatment of women in the early 1800’s. Shelley’s incorporation of suffering and death of her female characters portrays that in the 1800’s it was acceptable. The women in the novel are treated as property and have minimal rights in comparison to the male characters. The feminist critic would find that in Frankenstein the women characters are treated like second class citizens. The three brutal murders of the innocent women are gothic elements which illustrates that women are inferior in the novel. Mary Shelley, through her novel Frankenstein, was able to give the reader a good sense of women’s role as the submissive sex, through the characters experiences of horrific events including but not limited to brutal murder and degradation, which is illuminated by her personal life experiences and time period of romanticism.
In this essay I am going to answer ‘how and why does Mary Shelley make the reader sympathise with the character of the monster in her novel Frankenstein’.