Essay #3 Draft

Nikki Evensen

ENG102

Essay #3

Cause and Effect of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

            Although it may have taken a hundred years for Mary Shelley to receive proper recognition as the author for her first novel, Frankenstein, it is one of the most important works of her time. She went above and beyond the expectations anyone had of her and created a story so full of emotion, turmoil and human emotion, that people doubted her ability to have created it. She was young but she was extremely educated. She was unknown as an author but her parents and husband were highly celebrated. While these may seem like reason to fill Shelley with confidence, and give her the strength to use her connections to her advantage, her fears stood in her way. This insecurity shines through in her characters. Victor Frankenstein was so afraid of upsetting his family that he kept all his turmoil inside. Victor’s monster longed so much for social acceptance that it made him commit crimes so horrific, that any kind of acceptance became unattainable. In “My Hideous Progency”: The Lady and the Monster, written by Mary Poovey, she exemplifies Shelley’s uncertainty in herself:

Frankenstein occupies a particularly important place in Shelley’s career, not only because it is by far her most famous work, but because in 1831, she prepared significant revisions and an important introduction, both of 

which underscore and elaborate her initial ambivalence. By tracing first the contradictions already present in the 1818 edition and then the revisions she made after Percy’s death and her return to England, we can begin to see the roots and progress of Shelly’s growing desire to accommodate her adolescent impulses to conventional propriety.” (252)

Although Shelley was unable to overcome her own troubles, she shows through the characters of her story, how perilous these thoughts can be to mankind.

            In the very beginning of Victor’s tale, you see that he has always been adjusting things in his life to meet the requirements of others, in order to feel accepted and valued by his family. He grew up with his cousin Elizabeth as his best friend and companion, yet knew all along that his mother and father had plans for them to marry; drastically shaping their relationship as they matured. He then leaves his dearest friends to attend a university far from home, despite his deeply rooted concern for being part of a regular society, solely to please his father. Upon departing for school, Victor says:

I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away, and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had never ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavoring to bestow mutual pleasure, I was now alone…I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. (Shelley 26)

From childhood, to college, to his late nights spent in the laboratory creating his genius creature, Victor knew little more than that of trying to impress the people around him. He wanted his father’s approval as a family man, and his peer’s approval as a scientist. 

Frankenstein’s monster is also consumed with the fear of rejection. Ironically, he wants social recognition so bad, that the idea of not ever receiving it brings him to the point of violent, murderous acts of revenge; even suicide. The monster says to Victor, “Shall each man, find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man, you may hate; but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery as soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever…Man you shall repent of the injuries you inflict. (Shelley 116)

            This lesson being taught by Shelley, although it seems rather dramatic and complicated, it is quite simple. The bare bones of this story are based on very simple human emotions. Love, hate, family, happiness, misery and so on. One of the most accurate criticisms of Frankenstein belongs to Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley’s husband and editor. He says, “This novel rests it’s claim on being a source of powerful and profound emotion. The elementary feelings of the human mind are expose to view; and those who are accustomed to reason deeply on their origin and tendency will, perhaps, be the only persons who can sympathize to the full extent, in the interest of the actions which are their results.”(185) Percy is saying that only readers who have questioned these things in themselves; who have taken time to analyze the cause and effect of their own human emotions will be able to understand Shelly’s paradigm. If you’ve ever done something against your own wishes, only to be seen as a success to your peers, if you’ve avoided personal interaction to hide your insecurities, or if you’ve wanted to be part of the socially privileged so bad that you would stop at nothing to get it, you will truly be able to appreciate the trails and tribulations of Victor and his monster throughout Frankenstein.

            The relationships that Shelley had during the time she wrote Frankenstein would have caused anyone to have anxiety over his or her success. Her parents were well known in the literary world, as well as her husband. She was only 19 years old, and she wanted so badly to live up to the accomplishments of her family. This pressure made her so scared of the rejection of her writing, that she had it published anonymously. Like Victor, she wanted to be successful, but was nervous of the social interaction it would bring her. In her later years, she was so agitated by the initial rejection of her novel that she went back and made changes to it for a second printing. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar reiterate in Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve:

For of course, the nineteen-year old girl who wrote Frankenstein was no ordinary nineteen-year old but one of England's most notable literary heiress. Indeed as “the daughter of two person of distinguished literary celebrity,” and the wife of a third, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was the daughter and alter the wife of some of Milton’s keenest critics, so that Harold Bloom’s useful conceit about family romance of English literature is simply an accurate description of the reality of her life,” (226).

            Victor alienated himself from the people he loved the most in order to give life to his creation; Shelley alienated herself from her family while writing Frankenstein. Victor despised his creation once he was finished with it; Shelley wouldn’t even put her name on the first edition. The monster’s social elimination created enough resentment to retaliate; Shelley was so disturbed by the novels initial success that she went back and changed it. Sadly, Shelley did not live to see the recognition she now receives for her novel. She lived in the shadows of her parents and husband, and was considered a one book writer; nothing more than Percy Shelley’s wife. She never got to read that Frankenstein:

…is not only appreciated in it’s own right, but often regarded as more sophisticated in outlook and more accomplished in craft than anything of Percy’s. Contemporary criticism is almost unanimous now in regarding Frankenstein as not only canonical, after years of academic neglect, but paradigm breaking and exemplary; it is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the nineteenth century or the making of the modern consciousness. (Hunter xi)

Perhaps if Victor, the monster, or Shelly herself would have stopped striving so hard for acceptance, and being so terrified of rejection, things may have gone differently for them all. Little did Shelley know that Frankenstein, her first novel, her juvenile little ghost story, would become an educator in the causes and effects of human emotion for centuries to come.

Work Cited

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, “Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve,” taken from, Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Paul Hunter. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print. 226

Poovey, Mary, “My Hideous Progeny,” taken from, Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Paul Hunter. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print. 252

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Paul Hunter. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, “On Frankenstein,” taken from, Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Paul Hunter. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print. 185