Abortion
When one thinks of the concept of abortion, the idea of abandonment comes to mind. When a mother aborts their child, they abandon the life they have been given. With this we are able to see how the motif of abortion recurs in Frankenstein, though not in a literal sense. It is shown through both Victor and the monster express their sense of the monster’s hideousness. When he first saw his creation, Victor says: “When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly made.” -- Mary Shelley, page 67. Here Victor immediately abandons the monster, despite creating him, just as a mother aborts her child. The monster feels a similar disgust for himself: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” -- Mary Shelley, page 188.
Another example is when Victor destroys his work on the female monster, where he literally aborts his act of creation, preventing the female monster from coming alive. When Victor says, “I at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.” it is shown that Victor becomes dissatisfied with natural philosophy and shuns it not only as unhelpful but also as intellectually grotesque, just as he did with the monster
Another example is when Victor destroys his work on the female monster, where he literally aborts his act of creation, preventing the female monster from coming alive. When Victor says, “I at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.” it is shown that Victor becomes dissatisfied with natural philosophy and shuns it not only as unhelpful but also as intellectually grotesque, just as he did with the monster
Passive Women
For a novel written by the daughter of an important feminist, Frankenstein is lacking strong female characters. The novel is surrounded with passive women who suffer calmly and without any complaints: Caroline Beaufort is a self-sacrificing mother who dies taking care of her adopted daughter; Justine is executed for murder, despite her innocence; the creation of the female monster is aborted by Victor because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated; Elizabeth waits, impatient but helpless, for Victor to return to her, and she is eventually murdered by the monster. It can be said that the reason Shelley wrote such passive women was to shed some light on how being passive is dangerous behavior, to not only others but to oneself as well.
1. Despite the fact that the motif of abortion is not shown literally, how is it portrayed in this novel?
2. Mary Shelley was the daughter of a feminist, but the women in Frankenstein were written as passive. What kind of social commentary was she making about passive women?
3. The idea of abortion related to the concept of life and death. How does this relate to Frankenstein and the monster?
2. Mary Shelley was the daughter of a feminist, but the women in Frankenstein were written as passive. What kind of social commentary was she making about passive women?
3. The idea of abortion related to the concept of life and death. How does this relate to Frankenstein and the monster?