Frankenstein, A Creature of Society.When Cindy Porter was twenty five, a single mother, and living in the projects of Philadelphia she wrote a novel. Her novel was a story about a teenage boy who had grown up in poverty. The boy's daily confrontations with the hardships of his own life proved him to be incapable of dealing with such matters as he slipped into destructive patterns at school, home, and on the streets. From the known facts about Cindy Porter, it can be assumed that the novel played off of her fears and daily experiences of living in the projects of a major city. Just as it can be seen that Cindy's life and time influenced her writing, many ideals in Mary Shelley's life can ...view middle of the document...
It seems rather obvious that having been denied female companionship, the monster would grow to yearn for it (Florescu 84) The death of Mary's mother undoubtedly contributed to the persistent theme of the absence and ill fatedness of the women in Frankenstein. There is no better example of the unconscious effects of a world without women than Victor's dream." I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they become livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw grave-worms crawling in the fold of flannel." (Shelley 116) This paragraph is most obviously interpreted as a psychological effect of abandonment. Perhaps Mary was describing a dream that she once had herself (Wolf 59).In the early 1800s, Romanticism was the fore-most literary movement. It marked a violent reaction to the Enlightenment expressing an extreme assertion to the value of the individual and individual experience. Intense and imaginative, Romanticism was rooted in the emotions and sentiments. It tried to step away from the Christian view of God and toward a sublime wonder of nature. Percy Shelley, Mary's husband was a radical romantic. Percy spent much time studying the Prometheus mythology and his romantic influence can be seen vividly in the text of Frankenstein.The myth of Prometheus can be seen played out throughout the course of Frankenstein. In early myths, Prometheus stole fire from the Gods. The myth says that while at a meal between the mortals and the Gods at Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting bones over the choicest entrails. Man, therefore, was punished by the denial of fire. Prometheus goes on to defy the Gods once again by stealing back the fire. As a punishment, Prometheus was chained to a cliff and an eagle sent by Zeus picked at his liver daily (Wolf 17).In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein can be seen most explicitly as "the modern Prometheus." Once intoxicated by the idea of creating a true being, Victor, like Prometheus, will stop at nothing. Even the prospect of his own destruction does not stop Frankenstein from chasing his dreams. Above all, he sees his pursuit of "forbidden fire" or, in this case, artificial man as wholly virtuous and inoculated from criticism. The Promethean fever causes Victor to be dangerously out of touch with reality through the misuse of imagination and creativity. Just as Prometheus is tortured and put to an end by Zeus, Frankenstein's eventual death is a direct result of his creation of the creature. Victor Frankenstein is often referred to as the "modern Prometheus", as related in the subtitle, due to the obvious ties of ultimate downfall he has with the Prometheus legend (Florescu 85).A final theme of Frankenstein, a theme of parenting, is explored with nearly ev...
