WJEC ENGLISH LITERATURE

is perhaps not as acute as Victor’s. As critics comment: it is the depth to which Victor sinks
that makes him so great; he suffers in a way that the reader can not even conceive of.
In contrast, however, we can also understand that Victor’s suffering is self-inflicted. In this
way we are aware that Victor brings about his own downfall. Victor rejects his family,
lamenting the “silken cord” that suffocated his childhood and in that image acknowledges
that his family spoiled and indulged him; Victor has an idyllic childhood, but rejects it. His
desperate need to leave the private sphere, hints at an inability to develop relationships. In
the 1818 version of “Frankenstein” Elizabeth and Victor are cousins and this has lead critics
to speculate about the incestuous nature of the relationship. Certainly, the dream of kissing
Elizabeth in which, “her features appeared to change, and (he) thought he held the corpse of
(his) dead mother in (his) arms” suggest an unresolved and perhaps inappropriate blurring
between his mother and future wife. In this way, we can read Victor’s experiments as an
attempt to usurp the role of women, making his creation inevitably an unnatural monster.
Victor is characterized, in many ways, as arrogant and foolish; a man who deliberately
occupies the periphery of society. Bernard in “Brave New World” is a character who displays
similar contemptible traits and could be said to create his own suffering. Like Victor, he is
self-indulgent and self-obsessed. Bernard even remarks that John is his “victim” friend and
that, “One of the principle functions of a friend is to suffer”. Bernard’s friendship with John is
self-seeking and he wants to use the savage to garner popularity. This parallels Victor, who
describes how “No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely” as he will with
his creation, hinting that his motives are not altruistic, for the sake of humanity, but are in fact
egotistical.
Victor sets himself upon a dangerous and destructive path and his hubris means that he is
unable to recognise his own failings. Victor’s disappointment on beholding the monster, and
his description of the “catastrophe” in the creation of a “wretch” seem naïve given that he
expressed doubts about his own process and whether he should “attempt the creation of a
being” like himself; Victor misappropriates the “new” science and goes too far. In “Brave New
World” this misuse of science is mirrored; Huxley was incredibly suspicious about “false
science”; those theories, like Freud’s, that purport to explain all human behaviour without
taking into account individuality and difference. Science, for Huxley, should be dynamic, but
in the World State science is used to create stability and inertia. The lack of consideration for
difference is satirized in the Hatchery, “The bulging ranks of row on receding row and tier
above tier of bottles glinted” and Huxley’s contempt for this process is highlighted in the
images of death that are used to describe the Conditioning Centre, “The light was frozen,
dead, a ghost” and hands are “gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber”. It is ironic that a
location where embryos are developed is described in terms of death and decay, indicating
that this is an entirely dehumanizing experience and process. We can, therefore, appreciate
that both texts can be read as a critique of “false science”. We understand that Victor is at
the forefront of scientific endeavour, but as critics have suggested, he fails when he does not
take responsibility for his actions.
Ultimately, if we are to consider suffering in the novel, perhaps we should turn to the
monster’s experience. The monster can be considered the most isolated character in
Shelley’s novel. From the start, at his birth, he is rejected by his “father”, “he muttered some
inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks… one hand was stretched out”. To the
reader, this description is reminiscent of a child looking for warmth and affection and evokes
a sense of vulnerability, but Victor reads the signs as threatening. In many ways we can read
the monster as part of Victor; a dark part of the creator that is given a form in the monster.
This makes the rejection all the more profound and helps us to sympathise with the
monster’s suffering.
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