Social Jugdement In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Throughout the story you find that a man named Frankenstein has the desire to create another human being. After his creation was over with 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 1).  He abandons this creature when it needs him the most.

"Frankenstein's original reasons for creating life from dead parts are noble. He wants to help mankind conquer death and diseases. But when he reaches the goal of his efforts and sees his creature and its ugliness, he turns away from it and flees the monstrosity he has created. Mary Shelley seems not to condemn the act of creation but rather Frankenstein's lack of willingness to accept the responsibility for his deeds. His creation only becomes a monster at the moment his creator deserts it" (Shelley 3)

To the creature Frankenstein is his father and when he left him, he felt neglected and abandoned, not knowing how to take care of himself. So he left not knowing where he would go or how he would survive. He abandoned his creature as if it were an animal. "Every day, a significant number of people abandon animals in the world today. They are animals who are not equipped to survive on their own. On their own, they starve or freeze to death" (Shelley 2).

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"Frankenstein is not willing to fully take the role of the mother of his "child." Immediately after its birth he leaves his child and thereby evades his parental duty to care for the child" (Shelley 3).  In today's society people neglect and abandon there children like there nothing. When Frankenstein abandoned his creature he didn't even think how the creature felt, he just deserted him.

"The Monster appears to be an almost perfect creation (apart from his horrible appearance), who is often more human than humans themselves. He is benevolent (he saves a little child; he helps the De Lacey family collecting firewood), intelligent and cultured (he learns to read and talk in a very short time; he reads Goethe's Werther, Milton's Paradise Lost and Plutarch's works). The only reason why he fails is his repulsive appearance.

After having been rejected and attacked again and again by the people he runs into only because of his horrible physiognomy, the Monster, alone and left on his own, develops a deadly hatred against his creator Frankenstein and against all of mankind. Therefore only society is to blame for the dangerous threat to mankind that the Monster has become. If people had adopted the Monster into their society instead of being biased against him and mistreating him he would have become a valuable member of the human society due to his outstanding physical and intellectual powers"( Shelley 3).

His hatred grew from neglect and abandonment. Every person he came in contacted with immediately hated him. Nobody could look past his horrified appearance to see what was inside. His hatred then turned into revenge against his creator. The creature wanted Frankenstein to feel what he feels.

The concept of Social Judgement in the Novel

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a complex novel that was written during the age of Romanticism. It contains many typical themes of a common Romantic novel, such as dark laboratories, the moon and a monster; however, Frankenstein is anything but a common novel. Many lessons are embedded into this novel, including how society acts towards anything different. The monster fell victim to the system commonly used by society to characterize a person by only his or her outer appearance.

Whether people like it or not, society always summarizes a person's characteristics by his or her physical appearance. Society has set an unbreakable code that individuals must follow to be accepted. Those who don't follow the "standard" are hated by the crowd and banned for the reason of being different. When the monster ventured into a town"... [Monster] had hardly placed [his] foot within the door ...children shrieked, and ...women fainted" (Shelley 101).

From that moment on he realized that people did not like his appearance and hated him because of it. If the villagers hadn't run away at the sight of him, then they might have even enjoyed his personality. The monster tried to accomplish this when he encountered the De Lacey family. The monster hoped to gain friendship from the old man and eventually his children. He knew that it could have been possible because the old man was blind; he could not see the monster's repulsive characteristics.

But fate was against him and the "wretched" had barely conversed with the old man before his children returned from their journey and saw a monstrous creature at the foot of their father attempting to do harm to the helpless elder. "Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore [the creature] from his father..." (Shelley 129). Felix's action caused great inner pain to the monster. He knew that his dream of living with them "happily ever after" would not happen. After that bitter moment, the monster believed that "...the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union [with the monster]" (Shelley 138).  And with the De Lacey encounter still fresh in his mind along with his first encounter of humans, he declared war on the human race.

The wicked being's source of hatred toward humans originates from his first experiences with humans. In a way, the monster started out with a child-like innocence that was eventually shattered by being constantly rejected by society time after time. His first encounter with humans was when he opened his yellow eyes for the first time and witnessed Victor Frankenstein, his creator, "...rush out of the [laboratory]..." (Shelley 56). This wouldn’t have happened if society did not consider physical appearance to be important. If physical appearance were not important, then the creature would have had a chance of being accepted into the community with love and care.

However, society does believe that physical appearance is important and it does influence the way people act towards each other. Frankenstein should have made him less offensive if even he, the creator, could not stand his disgusting appearance. There was a moment, however, when Frankenstein "...was moved..." (Shelley 139).  By the creature. He "...felt what the duties of a creator..." (Shelley 97), where and decided that he had to make another creature, a companion for the original.

But haunting images of his creation, from the monster's first moment of life, gave him an instinctive feeling that the monster would do menacing acts with his companion, wreaking twice the havoc. Reoccurring images of painful events originating from a first encounter can fill a person with hate and destruction.

We, as a society, are the ones responsible for the transformation of the once child-like creature into the monster we all know. We all must come to the realization that our society has flaws that must be removed so that our primal instincts do not continue to isolate and hurt people who are different. We have entered a new millennium with tremendous technological resources at our disposal. Why do we still cling to such primitive ways of categorizing people?

Résumé

Mary Shelley made an anonymous but powerful debut into the world of literature when Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was published in March, 1818. She was only nineteen when she began writing her story. She and her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were visiting poet Lord Byron at Lake Geneva in Switzerland when Byron challenged each of his guests to write a ghost story. Settled around Byron's fireplace in June 1816, the intimate group of intellectuals had their imaginations and the stormy weather as the stimulus and inspiration for ghoulish visions.

A few nights later, Mary Shelley imagined the "hideous phantasm of man" who became the confused yet deeply sensitive creature in Frankenstein. She once said, "My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings." While many stage, television, and film adaptations of Frankenstein have simplified the complexity of the intellectual and emotional responses of Victor Frankenstein and his creature to their world, the novel still endures. Its lasting power can be seen in the range of reactions explored by various literary critics and over ninety dramatizations.

Although early critics greeted the novel with a combination of praise and disdain, readers were fascinated with and a bit horrified by the macabre aspects of the novel. Interestingly, the macabre has transformed into the possible as the world approaches the twenty-first century: the ethical implications of genetic engineering, and, more recently, the cloning of livestock, find echoes in Shelley's work. In addition to scientific interest, literary commentators have noted the influence of both Percy Shelley and William Godwin (Mary's father) in the novel.

Many contemporary critics have focused their attention on the novel's biographical elements, tracing Shelley's maternal and authorial insecurities to her very unique creation myth. Ultimately, the novel resonates with philosophical and moral ramifications: themes of nurture versus nature, good versus evil, and ambition versus social responsibility dominate readers' attention and provoke thoughtful consideration of the most sensitive issues of our time.

Sources Cited

• http://www.indigorescue.org/Abandonment.html
• http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/frankenstein-novel.htm
• Shelley, M.  Frankenstein. 1818.

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