Eli Solt

The creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has long been considered as critically divisive a character as Victor Frankenstein himself. Some interpretations argue that Victor is the moral good of the story and the creature is innately evil. Others argue the opposite and still some argue that the narrative lacks any kind of morality by either of them whatsoever.

Using a binary of good and evil is problematic in analysis of the text due to its simplicity, yet these are the principle foundations that moral philosophies are built on. Both the narrative and certain formal aspects of the text heavily rely on a kind of moral understanding which fuels these differing interpretations. One of the central questions asked of the text is “are people naturally good or naturally evil?” This question can be specifically applied to the creature who commits various egregious and violent crimes but appears to have a natural sensibility and capacity for empathy before he is witness to the horrors of the world. The novel also often appears to have a certain self-awareness of its place within the Romantic Period and to some degree a reflection of the decline of some Romantic literary values—particularly sensibility. While several minor characters in the text like Clerval, Elizabeth, and Justine Moritz display specific moral values of the time (though they are structurally nuanced), they are constantly questioning these values because of the direct or indirect actions of the creature and Victor. It’s important to understand how the ideas of ethics and morality in Shelley’s book are heavily influenced by other works of literature and ideas that surrounded Mary Shelley as she grew up. The framework of the sublime allows us to approach morality within the text from a philosophical and historical standpoint as we acknowledge Shelley’s influence from Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Through a romantic aesthetic context, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reveals a new subjective morality in a time of dramatic scientific and technological changes through the use of the Kantian Sublime, the character’s portrayal of the failure of novelistic sympathy and sensibility, and the frame narrative structure of the novel.

The Sublime

One of the most prominent features of Mary Shelley’s text and Romantic novels in general is their use of and/or their narrative reliance on the sublime. Poets such as Wordsworth, Blake, and Shelley’s husband, Percy Shelley, began to explore the application of one’s mind (specifically a poet’s mind) to understand the complexities and grand scale of nature and existence. Sublime writings were typically centered around the mind’s experience when placed in an awe-inspiring natural setting like on the peak of a tall mountain.

One of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth-century was Immanuel Kant, a German academic and writer who is responsible for the development of several schools of philosophical thought. One of Kant’s biggest interests was that of the sublime and how we can define such an intangible feeling. He described how the feeling, while having several possible causes, is most often experienced in nature. He broke it down into the mathematical sublime (of which can be measured) and the dynamically sublime (of power and dominion). While we can explore Kant’s definitions of the sublime in the context of certain narrative elements such as the creature or the settings, it is also important to understand the idea of the sublime in connection to morality, another subject discussed by Kant. As morality was seen as deeply interwoven with the human subconscious, Kant saw its inherent interconnectivity with the mind’s capacity and ability to experience sublimity. As Melissa McBay Merritt points out in her essay The Moral Source of the Kantian Sublime, “Kant defines moral feeling as “practically effected feeling”: it is a feeling that depends on, and arises from, a subject’s representation of the moral law” (Merritt 43).

Through Victor Frankenstein, we can see he has a good sense of morality as early as the first chapter of his story. Early on, when describing his background, he writes (in regards of his domestic sphere), “Neither of us possessed the slightest pre-eminence over the other; the voice of command was never heard among us; but mutual affection engaged us all to comply with and obey the slightest desire of each other” (Shelley 71). Until the creation of the monster, Frankenstein appears well-tempered, well-mannered, and of good moral code. Once the monster exists in the world, his value system is thrown into question and slowly begins to deteriorate throughout the narrative although it never completely goes away and acts as the final resistance to Frankenstein metaphorically becoming his own creation.

At the point of creation, the monster produces an effect on Frankenstein’s mind that has not been shown (or has not existed) to this point in the novel. Through the beginning chapters we see him as reasonable, logical, and a follower of science. While he does find interest in more experimental and unorthodox subjects like Agrippa, his mind is less subjected to sensibility and emotional concerns than other characters like Elizabeth and Clerval. When Frankenstein witnesses the monster he immediately says, “…but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 84). This is the first instance of his outward expression of intense emotion. Here he begins to see things more black and white, more as a dichotomy of good and evil. The sublimity of the experience of witnessing the monster has opened his mind, pushing him to the limits of morality of what he can and should do. This emotion as part of the sublime was key for Kant. As Merritt explains, “…Kant follows with an encomium to the sublimity of duty – sublime due to its source in what 'elevates a human being above himself (as a part of the sensible world)’” (Merritt 46). Frankenstein transcends basic human morality as he creates and witnesses a horror that has never been seen by another human before. This creates part of the tension and suspense throughout the rest of the novel as it becomes unclear if he is capable of righting the wrongs he’s committed. As a reader, being so connected to Frankenstein’s narrative before reading the monster’s perspective complicates our understand of what is right and what is wrong.

The creature also appears to possess a certain set of moral values which he acknowledges breaking and feeling guilty about on multiple occasions. This morality also seems to come naturally as his arc produces a decline of morality from the beginning. When the creature begins to help the DeLaceys by bringing them firewood overnight, the feeling he describes from this action is that of “pleasure” and he notes sympathizing “with their joys” (Shelley 129). Here Shelley presents the monster capable not just of moral feeling but, perhaps more importantly, of empathy. Empathy is the reason he does these good deeds at first and yet it is also responsible for his transgressions against Frankenstein.

The moment of deviation from a sense of good moral judgment for the monster comes with his murder of William Frankenstein. The monster describes the feeling of the crime saying, “…my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him’” (154-155). Here, the creature reveals his knowledge of how his actions affect others, specifically Frankenstein. He now wants to use his power to hurt the other.

The decline of morality is also explained by Kant who believes that “the capacity for moral feeling remains weak if left uncultivated, because the feeling itself is highly unstable…” (Merritt 44). The creature’s own morality is certainly left uncultivated in his early experiences in life, where every person he encounters shuns and abuses him. Referencing the DeLaceys, the monster expresses, “I admired virtue and good feelings, and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers; but I was shut out from intercourse with them…” (Shelley 136). The fact that he is on the outside of the cottage looking in and Felix’s eventual assault on the creature show the instability of his natural moral feeling and result in its decline. While still possessing a complex understanding of morality, the creature continues down a bad path and transforms from the embodiment of innocence and sympathy to the antithesis of it by the novel’s conclusion.

The most prominent scene of the sublime in the novel comes as Frankenstein climbs to the top of Mont Blanc and ends up meeting the creature for the first time since his abandonment. The sublimity of the setting is coupled with the sublime nature of the monster and of the meeting itself (that of creator speaking with his creation, i.e. God and Adam). Through the sublime experience of Frankenstein (and the reader), the concept of morality also plays an important role in the emotion of the character. At one point, in a fit of rage, Frankenstein expresses, “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes” (Shelley 118). The specific reference of hell implies the notion of a kind of judgment for the creature’s immoral actions.

Frankenstein also declares that, “There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies…” (119). This reflects Frankenstein’s mental shift to viewing things as black and white due to his experience of the sublime. By using the absolute statement of “we are enemies,” Frankenstein, as the creator, dictates both of their morality in the sense that one of them has to be in the right and the other in the wrong. In fact, for the rest of the novel Frankenstein is completely incapable of seeing beyond this dichotomy of good and evil. To him, the monster has to be his enemy and since he is the creator, this also means he has to be the monster’s enemy as well. It is also interesting to note the use of the word “community” which implies a larger sense of moral responsibility beyond just the two individuals. Frankenstein begins to realize that he had a responsibility toward humanity in a larger sense. He understands that through poor moral judgment, he may have failed them.

PROMETHEUS

There are many novelistic elements of Shelley’s text that explore morality without the sublime such as some of the allusions and intertextual references scattered throughout. One of the most interesting instances is the full title of the novel: Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus. A simple textual comparison quite easily brings to light the parallels between the Prometheus myth from Greek mythology and Shelley’s novel. Frankenstein parallels Prometheus and brings something unnatural (fire versus the monster) into the world which has a profound effect on humanity and results in horrible punishment. However, there is a more complex way in which the use of this intertextuality works with the text and more generally, how intertextual references change in meaning when placed in a modern context.

“Responsible Creativity and the “Modernity” of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus” by Harriet Hustis explores how the reintroduction of an ancient story into the Romantic period changes how we interpret both the original myth and the new text within the context of modernity. This is reflected in the fact that the title is not simply “Prometheus” but the modifier “modern” is added to suggest a change. Hustis claims that, “Titling the book as such: suggests a far more complex literary operation than simple appropriation or modified replication of an ancient Greek myth; it simultaneously invokes a literary paradigm and establishes a point of comparison or, more accurately, a point of departure for [Shelley’s] own creative endeavor” (Hustis 845). This “point of departure” reflects a changing of the meaning, or at least the method of transmission, of the myth through Shelley’s changes in the story.

If we interpret that Shelley is comparing Frankenstein to Prometheus, then we can see several notable changes that she makes between stories. First, unlike fire, the monster is not a positive addition to the world. It brings only pain, both to the creature itself and to humanity. Secondly, the ending of the main character’s stories are different. In Frankenstein, Victor dies at the end after telling his story. Prometheus, however, is forced to suffer for eternity as punishment for his actions. While some sort of eternal punishment for Victor in an afterlife could certainly be inferred from the text, there is nothing explicitly given that refers to such a punishment. This change could suggest that humanity as a whole becomes the representation of Prometheus after Frankenstein’s death. This viewpoint is much more Kantian in the sense that we are much larger than the individual and humanity, as it exists in nature, must reflect a larger more infinite ideal. Because of the immorality of one human, the rest are left to suffer because the monster still exists in the world. This ties into a curiously ambiguous ending for the novel. The final sentence of the novel is: “[The monster] sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance” (221). This ending seems out of place for the Gothic genre, which often has a more concrete ending with a specific moral message. The ambiguity of the ending reflects the moral ambiguity of the novel and seems to be ambiguous for the sake of horror more than anything else. Leaving the monster out in the world provokes a fear that it could exist in our world, lurking somewhere.

These narrative elements don’t exist simply to create fear or provoke an emotion, many of them also lead to a greater understanding of some of the formal features of the text. Communication and the relaying of information and knowledge is one of the most prominent motifs of the entire novel.

The reader is never addressed directly. Rather, all text is relayed from one character to another. This phenomenon is a result of multiple narratives being layered within the formal device of the frame narrative. In Jeanne M. Britton’s paper, “Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’” she argues that there are specific textual moments of sympathy between characters that always appear during instances of narrative transmission, narration, and transcription. These moments are important in that they lead to specific aspects of the production of the formal text like the frame narrative.

Each new instance of “storytelling” has a specific narrative function as well. The anecdotes told by each character within the frame narrative are meant to evoke an emotional and sympathetic response from the person the story is being told to. The monster wants Frankenstein to understand where he is coming from, what he went through, and how he feels. Similarly, Frankenstein wants Walton to feel the same thing and so does Walton when he writes to his sister (though it may be more apt to view his writing as a narration directly to the reader as this is the highest level of the frame). The frame narrative is problematic from an interpretive standpoint as the transference of narrative forces us to question the reliability of each narrator and evokes the possibility of subjective judgment (possibly moral) in each instance. As Britton points out, there is another level of the frame narrative that often gets overlooked: Safie’s story, told (unknowingly) to the creature. I think the inherent “good morality” of the novel lies within Safie’s story and to some degree within the literal walls of the DeLacey household. The DeLaceys represent the common folk or working-class and reflect ideal morality throughout the creature’s description of their lives.

Romantic Sensibility

To fully understand how Shelley uses morality within Frankenstein and how it compares to other Gothic works, we have to look at a prominent feature of Gothic literature: sensibility. Sensibility, in reference to Romantic literature, is heavily tied to emotion and one’s susceptibility to becoming emotional or displaying sympathy and compassion. While aspects of Frankenstein reveal instances of sensibility, the novel’s trajectory is more inclined toward a mode of declining or a failure of sensibility. It is important to note that Frankenstein is a novel that is published toward the end of the Romantic period (1818).

While Shelley’s text is not as direct of a parody of the Gothic novel in the way that Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is, many elements show an opposition to Gothic tropes and a rebuke toward the sentimental. The monster, both in presence and action, typically seems to produce sensibility in the characters. As mentioned previously, Frankenstein’s mind is highly objective and logical before he creates the creature. Once he does, he becomes highly susceptible to emotion which begins to deteriorate his mind and natural moral capacity in the same manner as the effect the sublime has on a poet’s mind. In fact, the monster himself reflects his own sentimentality, most notably in the scene on the summit of Mont Blanc when he reminds Victor that, “…I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (Shelley 119). Rather than comfort the creature and attempt to empathize, Frankenstein only continues his berating rant and verbal abuse toward his creation. The creature gives Frankenstein multiple attempts throughout the novel to feel sympathy for him, but Frankenstein never takes it, revealing a lack of the sentimental.

Another example of the failure of sentimentality is in the motif of characters telling “their stories” in order to be understood. In the Mont Blanc scene, the monster says: “The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned” (119). This becomes problematic and even dramatically ironic as the reader has the knowledge that Justine Moritz was able to speak her own defense yet was still condemned despite her pleas for innocence. This reflects the futility of the monster’s pleas toward Frankenstein, who ironically symbolizes the court that tried the servant girl which he thought was immoral. This motif also heavily foreshadows Frankenstein’s own fate. He is given the chance to speak in his defense when he recounts his story to Walton, yet regardless of his admittance, his fate comes anyway. No character in the novel is capable of overcoming an anti-sentimental world; a world that is unwilling to empathize with their personal accounts. 

While sensibility may be lost within the people of the narrative, nature seems to reflect a kind of sensibility of natural moral order that acts as an all-powerful balance in the world. Nature is frequently personified and often appears to be directly tied to the characters’ emotions. The most prominent use of personification is in the monster’s story at the DeLacey’s. When he realizes his true nature and his own “otherness” the monster cries, “Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me…” (Shelley 149). Here the personification of nature acts to emphasize a kind of hidden power, an unseen element of the natural supernatural.

The personification and attachment to nature (especially the stars) as a means of powerful internal expression is a common structure found in literature well before the Romantic period. Shakespeare frequently used these literary devices and often had character’s addressing inanimate, natural objects directly. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo realizes his fate as a “star-crossed lover” he yells up at the sky, “Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars!” (Romeo and Juliet 5.1.24). It was also a common feature in Gothic writing, notably in Charlotte Dacre’s 1806 novel Zofloya. Victoria notices “stars” in the mysterious Zofloya’s eyes, observing, “His dark but brilliant eyes, like two stars in a gloomy cloud, pursued her with their strong imperious rays…” (Dacre 191). Though it is the eyes which are here personified, the stars also act as personified objects of which Victoria cannot ever seem to escape. The stars return later and further instill in Victoria a sense of shame for her actions. “The stars had all retired, as though shrinking abashed from the view of so much guilt, but louring clouds obscured the face of heaven…” (202).

In these cases, as was common for Romantics, nature holds a power over the human mind, much like a way in which Kant would define as sublime. The monster in Frankenstein who at first is enamored by nature, suddenly feels oppressed by its order and its laws in which things that are unnatural, like himself, are not welcome. Just as though Romeo and Juliet will eventually be torn apart because the stars will not allow their love and just like Victoria’s inevitable fate in the hands on Zofloya, the monster simply does not have a place in the natural world and therefore will constantly have to fight to survive because nature deems him morally evil.'

The gender lens

Finally, I believe it’s impossible to look at morality in the novel without briefly touching on the historical and cultural context of the novel’s writing and publication. A long list of critics and essays have explored Frankenstein under the context of gender which is undoubtedly a prominent message in the subtext.

Regarding gender, many of the instances of its working within the novel can be traced to the influence of Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft who was a popular feminist in the late eighteenth-century and had produced several writings on the topic of women’s rights. Her work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, one of the first writings on feminine philosophy and feminism, argues against the Romantic idea of sensibility and sentimental literature. She writes, “Dismissing then those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel…” (Wollstonecraft 8).

Wollstonecraft argued that giving females the personality trait of sensibility put them in a weaker status than men and made their minds seem more fragile. Through Elizabeth’s death and her ironic antithetical position as a kind of anti-Gothic heroine, Shelley reflects these beliefs through the moral failing of sensibility and its inability to matter in the real world. Though morality on a whole becomes convoluted in the novel, there appears to be some subtle hint in defense of the moral values of women. It’s important to point out that all of the victims (both direct and indirect) of the monster are female or feminized by Shelley in some way. Justine Moritz is executed because she is blamed for a crime that the monster committed. Clerval, who is described as being more sentimental and in touch with his emotional side through his love of literature, is killed by the monster. And finally, Elizabeth, the beacon of femininity in the novel is killed in her bedroom.

The only other victim, William, is a bit harder to place within this category. However, I will argue that the text offers some evidence that suggests he is of a more sentimental nature. Frankenstein describes him saying, “William, the youngest of our family, was yet an infant, and the most beautiful little fellow in the world,” also mentioning his “lively blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, and endearing manners…” (Shelley 71). The monster also notes, before his murder, that William “was unprejudiced” (154), implying a kind of innocence that would likely have been attributed more to women in that time. The novel basically shows that all the females end up suffering because of the incompetence, violence, and immorality of the “masculine” mind and contributes to a changing historical understanding of gender roles and relations.

Through a Romantic aesthetic context, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reveals a new subjective morality in a time of dramatic scientific and technological changes through the use of the Kantian Sublime, the character’s portrayal of the failure of novelistic sympathy and sensibility, and the frame narrative structure of the novel.

Shelley’s narrative is indicative of changing literary times and a partial flipping of many tropes of the Gothic novel. The novel’s argument about ethics or any sort of message on morality remains relatively ambiguous through the literal text. From my analysis, I believe that Frankenstein reflects the consequences of anti-morality and a lack of good judgment. In a sense, the text is also anti-pragmatic from an epistemological standpoint. It rejects any practicality of materiality and becomes utterly enamored with its reflective presentation of internal conflict and doubt. The sensibility and emotions of the characters becomes less important to the consequences of their actions. No matter how much Frankenstein regrets his creation, he cannot undo what he has done.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Edited by Claire Grogan, 2nd ed., Broadview Press, 2002.

Brady, Emily. “Reassessing Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature in the Kantian Sublime.” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 46, no. 1, 2012, pp. 91–109. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jaesteduc.46.1.0091.

Britton, Jeanne M. “Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein.’” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 48, no. 1, 2009, pp. 3–22. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25602177.

Bour, Isabelle. “Sensibility as Epistemology in ‘Caleb Williams, Waverley’, and ‘Frankenstein.’” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 45, no. 4, 2005, pp. 813–827. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3844616.

Dacre, Charlotte. Zofloya; or The Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century. Craciun ed., Broadview Press, 1997.

Hanna, Robert. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/supplement1.html.

Holmqvist, Kenneth, and Jaroslaw Płuciennik. “A Short Guide to the Theory of the Sublime.” Style, vol. 36, no. 4, 2002, pp. 718–736. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.36.4.718.

Hustis, Harriet. “Responsible Creativity and the ‘Modernity’ of Mary Shelley's Prometheus.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 43, no. 4, 2003, pp. 845–858. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4625101.

Merritt, Melissa McBay. “The Moral Source of the Kantian Sublime.” The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, edited by Timothy M. Costelloe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 37–49.

Shakespeare, William. “Romeo and Juliet.” Romeo and Juliet - Entire Play, MIT, shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: The Original 1818 Text. Edited by D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, 3rd ed., Broadview Editions, 2012.

Tegan, Mary Beth. “Mocking the Mothers of the Novel: Mary Wollstonecraft, Maternal Metaphor, and the Reproduction of Sympathy.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 42, no. 4, 2010, pp. 357–376. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41203483.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman.” Archieve.org, 1 Apr. 2013,             archive.org/details/AVindicationOfTheRightsOfWoman.

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