Society tends to view those who are good looking in a positive way; those who are less pleasant to the eye are immediately judged in a negative way. This is the mistake Victor Frankenstein and those around him make upon witnessing the creature created by Frankenstein. The question here is, why does the monster react the way he does to humans? He was not raised to learn how to act in a proper society and he is constantly rejected by people that actually mean something to him. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shelley uses the monster’s constant rejection from society to show that a person’s traits are affected more by environment than by nature.
Early on in the monster’s story we begin to understand that he is not “evil” in the sense that Victor describes him in the first volume of the story. Though he has committed unforgivable crimes, following his story, we learn that his most innate desire is the same as any human’s – to be loved and accepted by others. It is only when he is rejected by those he cares for most (the De Lacey family) that he begins to identify with the darker side of human nature. His nature is shaped by the perceptions of the humans around him, more than any “good” or “evil” force that is within him.
He discovers Victor’s letters and learns how much his creator detested him; the De Lacey children and Safie are horrified at the sight of him. However, even after the hurt of these rejections, he continues to display a desire to be helpful to humans, saving the young girl from drowning (suggesting that there is good in him) only to then be shot by her protector. Even though he has grown increasingly conscious of humans’ negative feelings towards him and has been hurt and reproached repeatedly, he has not, up until this point, enacted violence towards the humans.
Is a child the product of his/her natural genetic material or the nurture he/she receives from his/her parents’ upbringing? Victor Frankenstein as the creator gives rise to a child, the Frankenstein monster, through quite unnatural circumstances. The child is born not as a result of a natural birth that results from sexual intercourse between a male and a female, but rather by use of scientific endeavor. Under natural circumstances, a child is born and then reared by being instilled with values that are fitting and acceptable to that social order.
Victor reflects, “I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption” (Shelly, 53). In Frankenstein's situation, no process of socialization took place; upon conception, the creation was abandoned and left to determine his way on his own. This lack of mothering left the creation not as a child, but rather a monster. We can learn from this that in the creation of a person both science and cultivation are required.
The monster does not fight his enemies, proving his innocence, purity, and good intentions. This can be used to contrast with his actions, feelings, and intentions later in the novel; as his environment increasingly worsens, the creature begins to change for the worst. “Some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country… Here then I retreated, and lay down happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more the barbarity of man (Shelley, 93-94).”
“Perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations (117). ” The creature acknowledges that his behavior and personality were directly affected by his environment. Growing and learning around people such as the cottagers caused the creature to develop into a kind, caring, and helpful being. In contrast, the creature expresses that if he had learned to behave and act around someone such as a soldier, he would not be the same.
The monster escaped from the confines of his creator's workplace and explored the world on his own. He learned language and of the nature of the world on his own. The monster meets the DeLacey’s and explains to Victor, “I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man only had one, which was father. The girl was called sister, or Agatha; and the youth, Felix, brother, or son” (Shelley, 109).
Because Mr. DeLacey is blind, the monster approaches him first and then soon after, Fellix and Agatha walk in and chase the monster out. The monster watched human interaction as an outsider, and tried to mimic their behavior. But he was never be accepted by humanity, not because of his ugliness, but because he was never taught how to be human. Shelley does not specify whether the monster might have been accepted by humanity, had he been properly reared by supportive parents and been instilled with a strong sense of humanity within him.
But instead he was excluded by his only parent and the family that he looked up to, and therefore all he knew was exclusion from others. The monster experienced only isolation, and yearned for companionship. The monster recognized the lack of care in his existence that led him to the state in which he found himself. This led him to hate all humans, rather than to love them, for there was no security or shelter offered to him by his creator or the DeLacey’s. The defining moment of the creature’s turn to evil is when the young boy, Victor’s brother, looks at him with disgust.
He looks at the boy and exclaims, “…an idea seized me. That this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” (p 166). He imagines that they boy will not look at him in disgust the way that those who have been socialized against deformities like his. However, the boy responds “Monster! Ugly wretch you wish to eat me and tear me to pieces — You are an ogre” (p 166). The child, like the creature, is a product of his upbringing.
The child’s use of “ogre,” a creature from folklore, to describe the monster suggests an indirect form of socialization – one which comes through storytelling, an arguably harmless form of education that many children are exposed to. The monster recognizes that humans may never transcend their own constructions of what it is to be human – that they may never accept him. At this instance he is driven to violence. The monster wasn’t always evil and obsessed with revenge. He was a kind creature who longed for acceptance and love from others.
Sadly, society only saw him as a wretched being who should be cast aside. The monster, in order to implement his revenge on Victor, kills those closes to him, his brother, friends, and wife. These deaths could have been prevented if only society could have accepted the creature. “…I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not only you or your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage” (Shelley, 87).
This quote shows the true nurture, which he received, from society. His own creator wishes to never see him again and to listen to him, so the monster blatantly mentions that if Victor does not listen then the rage he feels towards man and Victor will cause death to ensue. Arguably, these forces or good and evil exist within us all and are brought to the surface through our interactions with others and through the knowledge we acquire. Shelley presents a complicated picture of the balance of nature and nurture in human existence.
The monster’s evil nature is spurred by the scorn he receives from those who he hopes would love him. The one that he had hoped loved him the most had lost his human quality. His motives lacked human emotion and empathy, so that he could neither love his relatives nor his creation. If the parent cannot offer human love, the child will not be able to feel human, unless it can be searched out from another source. At the moment of its birth, the creature feels the repugnance his creator feels towards him and witnesses as he is abandoned.
The environment Victor places his creature in ultimately molds him into such a "monster. " Once again, this source agrees that the creature’s genes (“ugliness”) did not affect others’ reactions, which in turn affected his behavior. On the other hand, the neglect he experienced affected his behavior. Because Victor did not properly nurture and teach his creature to function, the creature is not accepted by anyone, leading to his transformation into a vengeful, ruthless monster.
