Treatment Of Sympathy In Frankenstein

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A Monster and His Creator as One. The major character’s in Frankenstein desperately seek but never find ideal sympathetic companionship, and as a result the novels plot repeatedly dramatizes the failure of social sympathy. As said by Jeanne M. Britton “Frankenstein offers a version of sympathy that is constituted by the production and transmission of narrative as compensation for failures of face-to-face sympathetic experience.” To clarify, Victor Frankenstein’s sympathy comes from the feeling of harming the human race. An example of this is displayed when Victor firsts creates the Creature, and then again when the monster asks him to build a female version. Victor says from the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, “Had I right, for The monster’s artificial body creates some unreal circumstances. As said by Denise Gigante ,“He is, like the blood and guts oozing from the fissures in his skin, an excess of existence, exceeding representation, and hence appearing to others as a chaotic spillage from his own representational shell.” He cannot feel the touch of another human or feel the emotion one might give to another. Shelley does a good job of considering his species of a different nature, and because it has such a hideous and deformed body it prevents sympathetic experience. A great example of this is when the Creature is watching the De Lacey family. He sees the family and starts to describe them and their unhappiness. In the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley he says, “They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often went apart and in solitary appeared to weep. 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. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy?” (Shelly Ch.12) The Creature cannot understand this family’s unhappiness. They do not have to live in a wretched body as he does, so why are they so The Creature is able to explain to Victor the torture he has been putt through, and what he would like from Victor to compensate from his abandonment. He appeals to Victor for sympathy, and explains that he wants a partner. Not just any partner, but a female partner. Victor however, does not feel that he could do that with good conscious. William Veeder explains “The name of symbolism, which reinforces Victor Frankenstein 's hubris in trying to eliminate the female as he attempts to win eternal fame as the founder of a new line of super humans. Instead of submitting himself to the will of the community and the family, the scientist asserts his ego by challenging the laws of nature.” (William Veeder, 1986: 226) Instead of “submitting” himself to the Creature, and essentially mending a torn relationship. He destroys the female with his egotistical nature. At this point there is no hope in thinking that Victor and the Creature may have the compassionate relationship the Creature desperately wishes

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