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Frankenstein and the Responsibility of Fathers

Frankenstein and the Responsibility of Fathers

Message from Walker: “Intellectual Takeout depends on donors like you to bring my work and the work of my stellar colleagues to the public. I love writing about art, culture, rural life, literature, and philosophy for ITO. If you value that kind of content too, please consider making a donation today. Together, we can help spread time-tested traditional ideals.”


On this All Hallows’ Eve, it’s a good time to reflect on classic works of gothic fiction, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the relevant warnings they often contain. In addition to providing us with some delightful shivers, Frankenstein also has some serious philosophical points to make that we would do well to consider.

As a story about a genius scientist with a lust for secret knowledge artificially creating a life that will eventually destroy his own, Frankenstein has much to say about the dangers of scientific experimentation gone rogue. It warns us about the consequences of playing God and of a naïve optimism about the inherent goodness of any and all technological or scientific “advancement.” At this point, that avenue of discussion is well-worn, however, and I want to focus on something different. I want to comment on what Frankenstein has to say about fatherhood and how the plot of the novel connects to Mary Shelley’s life and the ideas and actions of her husband, Percy.

As writers, both Mary and Percy are considered part of the Romantic movement, a web of ideas and artists that sprung up in the late 18th century, partly as a reaction against the rationalism and materialism of the Enlightenment. Romanticism is not easily defined, but we can identify some core features. These features include an emphasis on emotion over reason; a pursuit of the mystical, visionary, and transcendental; a deep appreciation for the glories of nature; a closer examination of the interior of the human person and the mysteries of the soul; a heightened view of the role of the artist, seen as a powerful creative spirit whose art rises to the level of spiritual experience; and an interest in folklore, medieval culture, the exotic, and the weird.

Gothic fiction—the genre of Frankenstein—is generally considered a subset of Romanticism. Sometimes called “dark Romanticism,” it possesses an atmosphere of mystery and terror against a backdrop of dramatic scenery, often involving old ruined castles and churches (“Gothic” thus refers to the Gothic architecture featured in this genre).

Even though she was a part of this philosophical and artistic movement, Mary Shelley appears to offer a critique of some aspects of Romanticism in Frankenstein. In the words of literary critic Nasrullah Mambrol:

In her brilliant Frankenstein fantasy, Mary Shelley questions many of the basic tenets of the Romantic rebellion: the Romantic faith in people’s blissful relationship to nature, the belief that evil resides only in the dead hand of social tradition, and the Romantic delight in death as a lover and restorer.

The novel also challenges the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an Enlightenment philosopher who inspired some aspects of Romanticism. In Rousseau’s philosophy, human beings are naturally good if left to their own devices. He believed in an original pre-civilization “state of nature” in which each individual was completely free and solitary, wandering through the wild and fulfilling his own needs in perfect contentment and virtue. Rousseau argued that what makes people evil is the negative influence of society. When human beings began to live together in communities, jealousy, pride, competition, and anger sprung into being and corrupted the natural goodness of humanity.

In Frankenstein, the monster begins in a position very similar to the theoretical “state of nature” of Rousseau: He is completely alone in the wilderness, gathering what he needs to eat, existing in a self-sufficient manner as he learns about the world. He seems to possess mostly good inclinations, but contrary to Rousseau, it is not the monster’s entrance into society that corrupts him; rather, it is his inability to be a part of society that fills him with resentment and fury. When he is rejected by a family of villagers whom he has been observing and come to admire, he falls into despair and hatred:

There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.

Shelley, with perhaps a deeper understanding of human nature than Rousseau, recognized that it is natural and good for human beings to live together in society. We desire to love and be loved and commune with others. To be deprived of this is the greatest torment, and it drives the monster to acts of cruelty, taking revenge on his “creator” who had abandoned him.

This brings us to the question of fatherhood. The young Victor Frankenstein became obsessed with the secrets of life and the prospect of creating life “from scratch.” So absorbed was he in his macabre work that he isolated himself from others to an unhealthy degree and failed to consider the consequences of what he was doing. The very moment that he succeeds in animating the cobbled-together corpse, thus creating the monster, he is overwhelmed with horror and regret, suddenly realizing what he has done.

In his terror, he flees from his creation, completely abandoning it to its fate. The monster thus enters the world with no guidance and with a sense of rejection: “Hateful day when I received life! … Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” Lacking any means of incorporation into human society, the monster becomes progressively more desperate and hate-filled, eventually resorting to murder and destruction as a means of venting his anguish and avenging himself.

In other words, the tragedy of the novel flows directly from Victor Frankenstein’s immaturity and irresponsibility. The irresponsibility manifests first in his Promethean desire to usurp a divine right, the right over life and death. It manifests again in his abandonment of his creation, his absolute refusal to take responsibility for what he has done.

There are strong parallels to fatherhood. Like Frankenstein, irresponsible fathers take into their hands matters of life and death when they engage in thoughtless sexual activity, especially outside the context of marriage. Second, many immature fathers refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions: They abandon their children, whether that be simply an emotional distance from their children, a literal abandonment of the child by refusing to raise him, or, worst of all, surrendering their unborn baby to death through abortion. In each case, they refuse to give the child the love that the child needs.

This is where Mary Shelley’s perspective becomes really interesting: Her husband, Percy, was precisely one of these irresponsible fathers. In 1811, Percy eloped with and married 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook. They had a daughter together in 1813. Harriet became pregnant with their second child, but Percy abandoned her at this point in favor of–you guessed it–Mary Godwin (the future Mary Shelley).

Percy and Mary ran away together, deserting Harriet and Percy’s two children. Harriet would later commit suicide. Percy himself would die at the early age of 29 in a sailing accident. Thus, Percy’s irresponsible behavior brought great misery and tragedy on himself and the women who were unfortunate enough to attach themselves to him. The echoes in Frankenstein, whose irresponsibility toward the being he “fathered” similarly caused tragedy, are striking. A final connecting thread between the novel and history can be seen in the fact that Rousseau, whose philosophy Mary Shelley engages with in the novel, was also a terrible father who abandoned all of his children to an orphanage.

So was Mary consciously or subconsciously working through issues related to her husband’s paternal failures? Or her own guilt in having occasioned them? Or was she criticizing the parenting failures of Rousseau, one of the forerunners of Romanticism? We can’t know for sure, and it isn’t my intention to psychoanalyze Mary Shelley.

What remains certain is this: Frankenstein warns us not just about the dangers of irresponsible scientific experimentation, but also the dangers of irresponsible fatherhood. Life—whether viewed in the context of scientific manipulation or as the natural product of sexuality—is something sacred, and it must be respected, guarded, and cherished. Men who believe that sacred laws do not apply to them when it comes either to science or sex bring only grief upon the world.

Image credit: public domain

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  • Avatar
    Rob Purdie
    October 31, 2024, 11:20 am

    Only a casual mention of Ms. Shelley's own contribution to this broken family 's condition? Her narcissism radiates through her genius just as did her husband's.

    Men suck. Father's suck. But Mary Shelley's "monster" is also apparently bulletproof.

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    Paul
    October 31, 2024, 6:21 pm

    Do you realize that the picture you feature of the Frankenstein monster with the little girl is from the scene in the movie just prior to when he kills her? The actual killing is implied rather than shown, by the the succeeding scene of her father carrying her corpse.

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  • Avatar
    Hallie L Cantor
    November 1, 2024, 3:58 pm

    Let's not forget that Mary Shelley herself had nutty parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. They were the "radical chic" liberals of their day, questioning the family unit and the role of women. Little Mary grew up amoral — eloping with a married man — while questioning society. Typical liberal hypocrisy.

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