Isolation of Frankenstein

            Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley created Frankenstein at the tender age of eighteen, completed it at nineteen, and anonymously published three volumes in 1818. It was an early success and has been not only a best seller, but also a major literary piece ever since as a result of exploring and exploiting the issue of human isolation. Because it was written by a woman, the story lends itself as a central text in feminist studies; although all of the women characters are passive, the Creature symbolizes the fate of the woman who refuses to conform to the norms set before her to cook, clean, and make babies by being treated as subhuman.

            Surprisingly, Frankenstein is not the name of the monster as people have learned through viewing television, purchasing Halloween costumes, or via horror stories by the campfire. Instead, he is an obsessed scientist who once was deemed a failure at poetry yet he is dying to leave his mark on the world. Victor Frankenstein attempts one of the earliest examples of human cloning – better known as playing God – to create a companion first and second to show it can be done. The “Creature” itself has no name except for “Creature” because Frankenstein never named it and with its size and looks, nothing is comparable to this sight. Keeping those facts in account, the reasons for isolation would seem fairly obvious; however, Captain Robert Walton is intrigued at this odd fellow and desires him to become a companion on his ship and learn the unknown such as the meaning of life and why some things happen.

            Frankenstein is further isolated in the text by spending “many days and nights of scientific investigation and labor in his private laboratory (in an apartment, not the castle as movies indicate), he discovers the secret of life” (Glut 14). Unlike later versions of movies, Shelley details the entire creation of “Monster life” into one paragraph since she felt it was unnecessary to use more space whereas in the movies, nearly one-half of the show is dedicated to the creation of this beast. Victor is appalled at his creature and flees from it, rejecting it in much the same fashion later existentialists believe God rejected man. He never accepts the responsibility to be a loving parent figure, leaving the Creature to wander miserably in a universe that disgraces the externally ugly, slightly different individual in favor of one who looks and behaves as an ordinary person.

 Ironically, the creature shows more human qualities than Frankenstein himself. Shelley demonstrates this belief throughout the novel by first reveling and exploring this unnatural creation innocently and totally responsive to the elements and over time, it is desensitized as a result of the fear and torment humanity caused. For example, people threw stones and shrieked in terror on sight. Of course it did not ask to be here, as the following quotation states:

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?”

(Glut 20)

Shelley cites this Creature as an example of feminism in the manner that when it was searching for love, it had been flatly denied by the cold masculine Frankenstein, providing an early example of man abandoning his dependent and completely rejecting it. Like a child, it needs the basic care and affection that only the parent can provide despite its incredible stature. In this case, the creature wants to be treated equally like any other human being; the only difference is it cannot be left alone because it has already experienced too much pain and hurt from Frankenstein.

            Shelley presents Frankenstein as a created man with feelings and actions justifiable; the only difference is the otherness exhibited after its “birth”. No one knew how to deal with it; therefore isolating it was felt to be the best thing to do by society as a whole. In turn, it is not the created object created in the laboratory that is deemed ugly; instead his creator displayed both irresponsibility and immaturity all for a name and fame. If Frankenstein had allowed for the creature to reproduce, then he perhaps may have been even more hateful of the created because it came from his bare hands; this is why he destroyed the creature’s potential mate. Shelley also makes the reader realize that everyone has a role to play and to perform it in the most positive way possible.

Works Cited

Glut, Donald F. The Frankenstein Legend: a tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff. 

            Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1973. 1-27.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. “Frankenstein.” The Norton Anthology of English

Literature, Seventh Ed. Volume 2. London:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

2000. 903-1034.