Slide 1: I’ll be examining Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how it can be applied to the novel Frankenstein. This study will answer the question: Can the psychological study on devotion and happiness can be applied to this novel by Mary Shelly?
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Slide 2: Abraham Maslow was a psychologist in the mid 1900s. He first published his concept of the Hierarchy of Needs in his article A Study of Human Motivation in The Psychological Review. It was generally accepted that there are 6 stages, but that is currently debated. Throughout this study I will be applying the 7 stage concept rather than the 6 step alternative. The difference is in the 5th step where it can be split into physical and mental divisions, better known as Cognitive needs and Aesthetic needs.
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Slide 3: Robert Walton is actually not a big part in the book but still has some very interesting psychological anomalies about him. Walton’s needs are satisfied through his sense of adventure, but for Basic needs this is not the case. Basic needs consist of necessary food and water. It’s more commonly known as physiological needs. Walton satisfies this through his life at sea containing adequate shelter and food stores.
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Slide 4: Victor Frankenstein has no struggle in satisfying his basic needs considering his wealth which allows him to purchase and consume more than enough food.
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Slide 5: The monster, on the other hand, because of his appearance, must live in isolation meaning to satisfy his basic needs he must put in tremendous amounts of effort. This effort includes hunting for food and water, as well as theft.
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Slide 6: The first incident of Walton satisfying one of his needs through adventure is in the second stage. Safety needs are needs that include feeling comfortable in the present setting. Walton, however, does not seem to want this fully satisfied because he enjoys adventure and excitement.
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Slide 7: Victor Frankenstein satisfies his safety needs at first my his wealth again, but later it is stripped from him when he is threatened. The void caused by a certain need being unsatisfied can result in extreme stress.
Slide 8: The Monster must satisfy this need through physical strength and by living in the impoverished family’s storeroom.
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Slide 9: Early in the book we witness Walton’s desire for companionship. This shows his third stage need. His crew does not satisfy this need for him, and instead it is fulfilled when Victor arrives on his ship and communicates to Walton in a satisfactory way.
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Slide 10: Victor Frankenstein satisfies his need for companionship in a very interesting way. Initially Elizabeth, of course, serves as his companion considering she is his fiance. However, not the Monster itself, but rather the idea of the monster provides him with his companionship.
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Slide 11: The Monster is nearly completely deprived of companionship. Initially he desires Victor’s affection, but later the monster learns to extract a feeling of friendliness from knowledge and observing the family in the cottage. After time though, the monster seeks full satisfaction and of course pursues the concept of a mate.
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Slide 12: Walton satisfies many of his needs by effectively not fully satisfying them. He lacks any issues with the esteem stage because he is constantly motivated by his adventure drive.
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Slide 13: Victor’s Esteem needs are very interesting. The obsession with creating life from nothing is actually what permits him to accept himself. He is driven by self motivation to create it and interact with the product.
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Slide 14: The monster begins to recognize his hideous appearance and accept his looks, but makes up for his outward appearance by becoming literate and developing important skills. Once this is achieved he moves on and progresses in his desire to have a mate.
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Slide 15: The need to stimulate the mind is very important to Walton and is satisfied in his conversation with Victor. Victor’s story enraptures him and ultimately presents solvency to the issues mentioned earlier in the novel.
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Slide 16: Peace of mind in Victor is actually achieved when the monster is created. He achieved his work and did the impossible. Later though, this is taken away when the monster seeks revenge.
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Slide 17: The Monster remains on this stage for far longer than either of the other characters. His pursuit of knowledge is by far the greatest progress made by the monster.
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Slide 18: Visual stimulation is greatly appreciated by Walton as seen in his expectations of the Arctic.
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Slide 19: Victor is not dissatisfied with his appearance and enjoys nature’s phenomena such as lightning.
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Slide 20: The Monster is cognizant of the presence of others and nature around him giving a perspective that neither of the other characters have permitting deeper insight into the workings of the mind.
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Slide 21: Around the end of the novel each character reaches a certain form of self actualization. Walton reaches this with Victor’s story, and the final situation of his expedition.
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Slide 22: Victor reaches self-actualization in death. His mind was consumed by the thought of revenge and acceptance of the life he lived was not achieved until the brink of death.
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Slide 23: The monster is by far the most self-actualizes character by the conclusion of the novel. His realization is one of self acceptance. The monster became the beast that everyone saw him to be and accepted that whereby he sought out his own death to fulfill Victor’s revenge goal.
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Slide 24: Transcendence is the famed final stage. The 8th stage that consists of spiritual attunement. To become in synch with a religious perspective after becoming fully self actualized is to transcend. This cannot be applied to Frankenstein though considering no character reached this level.
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Many psychological anomalies are presented throughout this novel, but the most interesting situation is the insight that Mary Shelly has into the minds of others. Mary Shelly effectively typified Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs before even it was published. However, the 1800s were not conducive to the production of such a soft science meaning her observations and personal experiences shaped the design of Frankenstein’s mental underlining while producing a fully relative novel.
The novel appears to be a novel of motivation of characters as they develop. Walton is motivated largely through adventure and progress in his daring expedition. Victor Frankenstein is self-motivated and can be built to be a perfectionist character considering his dissatisfaction and even hatred of the monster. The monster first wishes only to impress and prove his mind is not as terrible as his outward appearance; this motivation ultimately leads to his downfall.
However, Shelly’s understanding did more than scraped the surface. Shelly presented the concept of need depravation. Being stripped of a vital need after already progressing further in the hierarchy causes extreme stress and even depression. Walton cannot demonstrate this as he is relatively satisfied throughout the novel, but Victor falls into a deep state of depression and even physical illness due to the lingering thought of revenge. His obsession and his guilt lead to exaggerated stress materializing into his month long spouts of unhealthfulness.
Even development is a present concept in the novel Frankenstein. Each character explicitly progresses through the hierarchy of needs. Walton, Victor, and the monster all individually satisfy each need finally becoming self-actualized however soon before their death. Further even, this novel represents her own development as a person. The novel could even go so far as to illustrate her own progress through the Hierarchy and becoming self-actualized herself. Each of the three perspectives throughout the novel can reflect her life experiences. Victor’s loss of his feeling of safety can be equivalent to Mary’s feeling after the major deaths in her lifetime.
Mary Shelly’s literary work serves as a precursor to Maslow’s article. She must have seen people’s minds as well as her own mind very comprehensively to establish a perfect representation of the development of humans. Even socio-economic status is present. Walton demonstrates the straight-forward, most likely middle-class character appealing to those reading from that economic situation. He has risk-taking attitude while also maintaining a certain conservatism in that he wont abandon safety and basic needs for the sake of adventure. Victor becomes a beacon of the upper echelon of economic society. He represents the view that the rich must account for the doings of the poor, in this case the monster. This concept is driven by Victor’s reaction to need depravation. When safety needs are infringed upon, Victor, quite literally, goes insane. This clearly represents how a more wealthy person would not handle a sudden situational change very easily especially one of such proportion as the threat the monster makes to him. The monster has trouble filling each need similar to how the severely impoverished would have issues. His basic needs are satisfied only through effort resulting in a connection to the poor considering the effort they would need to place into that level of desire. Each day is a life-death situation.
The novel presents not only development, motivation, stress, personal occurrences, society as a whole but also a broad-range perspective from each facet of society. This novel represents Mary Shelly as not only an author, but also, unknowingly, a psychological analyst. Frankenstein is indeed a psychological study disguised as a novel published 125 years prior to the concept it exhibits.