Frankenstein Mary Shelley\'s Frankenstein Touches

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein touches on a number of important social and political issues that resonate to this day, and perhaps none more so than the role of women when it comes to procreation and childbirth. The novel perpetuates the notion that procreation independent of woman is unnatural and ultimately destructive, and although this is not a morally, ethically, or scientifically defensible position, the novel is remarkably effective in making its case. In particular, Frankenstein's relationship with Elizabeth and the monster's asexual birth highlight the novel's position regarding the importance of motherhood and the dangers of an absent mother. By considering the scene of Frankenstein's mother's death alongside the monster's birth, one is able to understand how the novel posits motherhood as an essential element of any healthy human life, and furthermore, how the absence of a mother precipitates humanity's most destructive impulses.

Perhaps the most important scene concerning Frankenstein and Elizabeth's relationship comes when Frankenstein's mother dies. Just before Frankenstein is about to head off to college, his mother becomes deathly ill, and on her deathbed, she basically instructs Elizabeth and Frankenstein to get married. In fact, in her final words, she tells Frankenstein and Elizabeth that "my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union" (Shelley 19). This fits quite naturally with the preceding narrative, because by this point Frankenstein and Elizabeth have developed a close relationship, and indeed, Frankenstein and Elizabeth are eventually married. However, the mother's death just before Frankenstein goes away to college serves as a kind of omen, because it is during his time in college that he develops an interest, and one might say infatuation, with the notion of creating life. This is particularly important because the creature which arises out of this infatuation ultimately kills Elizabeth, such that one can interpret the mother's dying desire not as a hope for the future, but rather as an ominous foreshadowing as to Elizabeth's eventual fate. Furthermore, Frankenstein's mother's death results in a conspicuous lack of mothers throughout the rest of the novel, a lack that will play an important role in the scene of the monster's birth.

While Frankenstein's mother's death foreshadows the danger of a life absent a mother, the birth of the monster completes this dangerous prediction by showing the revulsion that, at least according to the novel, is the undeniable result of procreation absent a mother. Following his mother's death (and his lack of a marriage to Elizabeth), Frankenstein decides to create life on his own, but the event does not go as he planned. Immediately after the monster comes to life, Frankenstein questions "how can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe?" (Shelley 42). Frankenstein's creation of the monster is rendered as a kind of horrific pregnancy; for example, where a pregnant woman expands with the child she is bearing and usually eats more, Frankenstein wastes away during his work, depriving himself "of rest and health" (Shelley 43). Rather than expressing any kind of paternal (or maternal) love for his creation, Frankenstein recoils, as "breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart" (Shelley 43). One can quite reasonably view Frankenstein's desire to create life as a kind of twisted mourning, and the fact that his attempts to give birth without any kind of mother reveals the novel's position regarding the absence of a mother.

In short, the novel views the mother as necessary not only for continuing procreation through her blessing regarding future marriage, but also through the mediating role she seems to play in the creation of life. Without a mother present, Frankenstein recoils from creation and abandons it to its fate, and the rest of the plot seems to suggest that the monster would have been able to grow up reasonably well adjusted if only he had been granted the encouraging, caring support of a mother. Essentially, Frankenstein transfers his own lack of a mother (and its attendant neuroses) to the monster, such that most of the tragedies of the story can be attributed to Frankenstein's mother's death. Her absence encourages Frankenstein to work towards creating life asexually, and the ultimate absence of a mother at the monster's birth ensures that it will never be able to develop like a normal human being.