Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Mary Shelley's Frankenst

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a gothic romance, and it deals with conception of love as a necessity in life. It is the thesis of this paper that it is Dr. Frankenstein, not the creature, who is the true monster, because he allows his creation to come into this world but he is not prepared to give it the love and attention that it needs in order to function.

Shelley is ironic in her ability to contrast the monster's need for love with the fact that Dr. Frankenstein seeks out true love with Elizabeth, his foster sister and later his bride. This is why the monster, in order to exact his revenge, visits the doctor on his wedding night: "I will be with you on your wedding-night!" (Shelley 172). By breaking into the nuptial chamber, the monster is able to strangle the bride.

On one level this is indefensible: the creature has killed the beautiful Elizabeth. Shelley eventually metes out the punishment for Frankenstein's monster, and at the end of the novel he vanishes out over the ice field to certain death.

But when one returns to the key section in the book, it is obvious that the monster has been made of human parts, though he is so ugly that it is impossible for him to gain any love from others. Sickened by his fate, the monster becomes violent in other ways that show he needs love or caring as

much as he needs the air he breathes.

The monster is at first horrified when Frankenstein himself shrieks at the sight of him in his bedroom. Later, when the creature

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just as much as a "real person." The fact that he ignores this is his fatal mortal flaw, and it is why Walton ultimately comes to see the doctor as the greater evil when compared to the monster himself. Christopher Small points out that "in the last hours of his life, Frankenstein revolves again, inconclusively but revealingly, the question of his own responsibility, of guilt or innocence" (173). It is that author's contention that Frankenstein is "guilty" on a number of levels, but perhaps his worst sin is the creation of life without the love of God. Shelley uses this theme to question the morality of certain areas of science. In some way, Frankenstein anticipates such discoveries as the atomic bomb. Just because there is a scientific advancement, is this progress? Don't scientists have to look beyond the physics and the mathematics of their efforts to the ethics involved? The necessity of love reaches its peak when the monster goes to Frankenstein and makes a horrible demand. He insists that the doctor make a mate for him. In this way, the monster feels that at last he will receive the love and companionship that he needs and deserves. There is a degree of reason in this request: the monster has come to accept t

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