An Idiot’s Guide to ‘Frankenstein’
Victor Frankenstein: Characterisation
Victor Frankenstein is a character who is full of contradictions and conflicts: the reader is never certain whether he shows bravery or cowardice, or both; he feels guilty about his actions but yet blames the Creature; he is at once both unfeeling and insensitive and yet a loving and caring person. To complicate matters even more, he is an unreliable narrator, so what he says does not necessarily really reflect what is true. For example, he is telling his story to Walton, whom he likes and admires, therefore we can probably safely assume that he glosses over some of the more inglorious scenes in his story and emphasises those parts in which he seems noble and brave. He must have been frightened of the consequences of his actions, yet never fully admits this.
Furthermore, Victor is obsessive and single-minded: this can be seen both in his approach to making the Creature and also in his relentless pursuit of revenge against the Creature (it is ironic that Victor is at first obsessed with creating the Creature, then wholly obsessed with destroying it). He is extremely intelligent in an academic sense, and this makes him a very powerful man, although this is not something he fully grasps himself. However, he is not emotionally intelligent, and this is what causes him to make such fatal errors, for example in abandoning his Creature. He had the brains to transcend the normal rules of science in making a new life form, yet he was not intelligent enough to realise what the consequences of abandoning it would be. This lack of emotional intelligence, and possibly also his extreme sense of pride, is what causes him never to fully take responsibility for his own actions. Even at the end of his life, he blames the Creature for everything which has happened, and does not take into consideration that he should also share some of the blame. Significantly, he has remained completely ignorant of why the Creature killed his loved ones and not himself: the Creature desperately wants Frankenstein to feel what it feels. That is, loneliness and desolateness. It wants him to understand just how terrible its own life has been. Yet Frankenstein never does realise this. He certainly feels desolate and lonely, but never really connects this feeling to how the Creature feels. He also does not understand why the Creature does not kill him (the Creature has no desire really, to kill him. In making Victor chase him, the Creature is getting the only human contact – indeed the only contact – that it has ever had in its life. The Creature does not want Frankenstein to die, and mourns him when he does, because Victor is the only person it’s ever had a relationship with) – proving yet again that he is completely incapable of understanding the Creature’s thoughts and feelings, as a living, breathing being.
Until he meets with the Creature, Victor’s self-obsession is endless. His main concern with his own ambitions is reflected in his irresponsibility. Even he, however, cannot be unmoved by the Creature’s story and agrees to make a female companion for him. Nonetheless, he again abandons his responsibilities to the Creature by refusing to complete the female. He fears creating a monstrous ‘other’ race who might run riot over the earth; yet the Creature gives no indication that he intends to reproduce, and simply speaks of living in isolation with his companion until both die. Frankenstein’s fear of a ‘multiplication’ of Creatures has, in fact, roots in his own ambitions and self-obsession: when he first has the idea for his experiment he says:
‘A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.’ (p43)
This suggests that he assumes that his own arrogant, egotistical desire to create a ‘race’ must also be in the Creature’s mind. It is this same self-obsession that causes him to assume that the Creature’s threat about his wedding night is directed at him, not at Elizabeth.
The destruction of the female Creature is what sparks off the deaths of Clerval and Elizabeth and the final chase across the northern ice. This chase reveals a change in the balance of power: before the Creature had seemed helpless and dependant on Frankenstein, whereas towards the end he is the dominant one in the relationship, leading Frankenstein across the wilderness and leaving food and messages for him. It also shows that they depend on each other. The Creature significantly kills Frankenstein’s family, not Frankenstein himself. It becomes so that neither can live without the other. In a sense this shows the permanent and binding bond between parent and child. The Creature’s lament at Victor’s death is a cry of pain, anguish and desertion, and also of remorse (a feeling that Frankenstein never shows towards the Creature).
At Victor’s death, he speaks of another who ‘may succeed’ (p. 166) where he has failed and this shows he has learned very little from the suffering he has caused. This is made particularly clear when he does not understand Walton’s desire to turn the expedition around. Even now, after ambition has destroyed him, Victor cannot see the destruction in allowing ambition to take over: the sailors turn back because they realise that the pursuit of their goal is not worth more than their own lives; Victor still cannot see this.
Key Quotations (relating to Frankenstein’s character):
Frankenstein’s Narrative (1)
1 “While I admired [Elizabeth’s] understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favourite animal; and I never saw so much grace both of person and mind united to so little pretension.”
Here, Victor compares the way he treats Elizabeth to the way he would treat a ‘favourite animal’, which tells us a lot about how he views her. Although it is not an unpleasant comparison – indeed, he calls her his ‘favourite’ – and although he is praising her ‘grace of person and mind’, it is clear he does not really fully respect her. He refers to her as being like a pet – a possession to keep and love, but not an equal – which tells us he does not view her as someone who is the same as him. He obviously believes she is there to love him unconditionally; and that he can pick her up and drop her when he pleases, as he would an animal. This also becomes clear through his actions towards her – he leaves her for years on end and yet she is expected never to complain, which she doesn’t, and to welcome him lovingly without reproach when he returns.
2. “…I entered with the greatest diligence into the search for the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my most undivided attention: wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!”
This is a very revealing statement: Victor wishes to find the legendary ‘elixir of life’, a potion which would keep a person alive by banishing disease and old age, but not because he wants to help others; instead, it is because of the ‘glory’ that will come from the discovery of it. His motivations are purely selfish. It also reveals Victor to be a person who craves attention, admiration and praise; therefore, we should be cautious about believing everything he says in the novel, as he tells his story to Walton, a person who he respects and admires. It is probably safe to say that Victor tries to paint himself in a very favourable light to Walton, since he has already given away that he thrives on admiration and attention from others.
3. “No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bored me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success…A new species would bless me as its creator and source: many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude so completely as I should deserve their’s.”
The comparison to a hurricane here is particularly effective as hurricanes are destructive, powerful forces which quickly obliterate everything in their path; similarly Victor’s incredible obsession spurs him on, and his ability and intelligence make him powerful, yet destructive (as the consequences of his actions prove him to be). He also lets slip his reasons for wishing to create another life form, and in particular, why he wanted to create an intelligent being, like a human: he says ‘a new species would bless me as its creator’. Victor is clearly stating that he desires to be thought of as like a God: he wants to be admired, respected and, importantly, revered by the new species. He does not want to study a new species because he is fascinated by the science of it, or teach a new species, or to create a new species for any other moral or good reason; he simply wants them to worship him.
Even more interestingly though, he refers to himself as a ‘father’ here. This is significant, as it shows that Victor did have some sort of awareness of the responsibilities of a creator towards his Creature, yet he does not fulfil these responsibilities (he also shows awareness of this later, when he speaks to the Creature for the first time; a sense of nagging guilt comes over him and he admits he has duties towards it as its creator).
4. “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.”
Victor is contradictory here: in chapter five, when the Creature is ‘born’, he says that he had selected his features to be “beautiful” (see the quotation below), however here, before the Creature is ‘born’, he admits to feeling a sense of ‘loathing’ when he dealt with materials from the slaughter-house, therefore proving that he was not oblivious to the fact he was creating a monstrous looking creature, despite what he tells Walton. However, he carries on with his task because he is obsessed with the idea of creating a new species, and the glory what would come from that.
5. “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God!”
See above.
6. “I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty; and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me; but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy, and ran down to Clerval.”
Victor tries very hard here to persuade Walton of his point of view, that he had done no wrong: his language is very carefully chosen to try and get Walton on his side. He uses words like ‘fearfully’ to suggest that he was in danger, and ‘freed’ to suggest he had escaped some terrible fate. Furthermore, he uses emotive words like ‘hideous’ to describe the Creature, and ‘enemy’, even though at this point the Creature has done nothing wrong, or nothing to Victor. It merely exists, because Victor has made it exist. Victor calls it ‘enemy’ because he is speaking in retrospect, after the Creature has indeed become his enemy, and because he wants to impress Walton: relating how he abandoned his vulnerable Creature is not going to impress him, so he uses words such as ‘enemy’ instead.
Furthermore, he talks about his ‘good fortune’ that the Creature has vacated his apartment. This shows Victor to be cowardly and irresponsible, as if the Creature really was evil, then he would have unleashed it onto the world without a thought; and if it was not evil, then he has abandoned an innocent, vulnerable new being in a world it knows nothing about.
7. “A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.”
Again, we can see here another example of Victor’s unreliable narration. This should be taken with a pinch of salt, as Victor is clearly trying to present himself in a more favourable light to Walton. That he might be considered mad by the judges is indeed a possibility, but it does not really hold up as an excuse to say nothing for two reasons: firstly, Victor kept a journal of his work and is an acclaimed scientist at the university. Therefore, he can prove his scientific discovery through the workings in his journal and the professors at the university can vouch for his character. Well-educated, professional men of high standing in society would be taken very seriously by a court; Victor himself would be taken far more seriously by the court, despite his strange tale, than Elizabeth, who was a woman and therefore less respected (women were considered irrational, hysterical beings whose word could not be relied upon to be true). Moreover, whether he would be considered a madman or not does not really matter when a close family friend’s life is actually at stake for a crime she did not commit. Victor actually lets Justine die a terrible death, with a blackened reputation, because he is simply too cowardly to speak up and damage his own reputation. This shows Victor at his very worst.
8. “I believed in her innocence. I knew it. Could the daemon, who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy…I rushed out of the court in agony…but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not forego their hold.”
Again, this is typical of Victor: throughout the novel he blames others for the consequences of his own actions. His transfers the blame for his own inaction onto the Creature. Certainly the Creature is guilty of the murder of William, and of framing Justine, but it has not ‘betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy’, i.e. Justine. It is Victor who does this, yet he blames the Creature. Yet again, he is unable to take responsibility for his actions.