Estrangement of Society in Shelley’s "Frankenstein"

Categories: Frankenstein

Idea of estrangement has progressed toward becoming piece of conventional language, much utilized in the media. We might be told, for instance, that groups' identity getting to be distanced from society, or that youngsters are estranged from standard qualities. With such utilization of the idea we get the impression of the sentiment of partition of one gathering from society, however the idea has customarily been utilized in human science, essentially by Karl Marx, to express a considerably more significant feeling of antagonism than most contemporary use.

When looking at the novel one remarkable theme is isolation. In his article Kim Hammond writes that:

Frankenstein's story, written in the era of the French and industrial revolutions, embodies this very message, that responsible, humanitarian modernity required and still requires a 'redefinition of what constitutes progress'. In Frankenstein, we see that knowledge and expertise, in the wrong hands, and with no structures of social accountability, can be dangerous, and as such present a risk to society.

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Shelley's elitist expert, working in secrecy, causes terrible destruction that is no unfortunate accident, but rather the product of his self-centred, ambitious, unreflecting and irresponsible actions. Read as such, we can take from Frankenstein the message that avoiding the potentially monstrous consequences of modernity requires transparent, responsible and accountable science and technological development within a democratic arena with an emphasis on communal benefit, not personal gain, be it social or economic or most likely both. Such steps at least could pave the way for humanitarian technology and materialism, and move us beyond relentless social/ economic competition for success, glory or wealth and its often ensuing anti-social ambition, isolation, alienation and social and (now forefronted) environmental hazards and injustices(192).

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Feeling of estrangement felt by representatives, reflected in their absence of warmth towards the association and in trusting that their activity/work isn't significant to different parts of their lives. Estrangement is caused ordinarily by elements, for example, an absence of association in even essential basic leadership, absence of human contact, little trust in advancement, and a sentiment of frailty. Victor Frankenstein also experienced alienation throughout this story. He experienced alienation from both his family and society. In Frankenstein, Victor is described as a man who’s in love with science. He spent much of his time creating a monster. However, he wasn’t aware of the consequences this would bring him. At the end of this story he spent much of his time trying to destroy this monster. As he tried to destroy the monster he isolated himself from society. He would always go to his lab and try to come up with other scientific creations. He regretted ever creating the monster because the monster caused him a lot of trouble. People then thought of him as some crazy scientific genius. Victor’s scientific views alienated him from all his surroundings. He had a very keen interest in since ever since he was a child. Him being so different from the rest of the family is what got them to alienate him. He just seemed so different and strange from the rest.1)

No one needs to be distanced. Distance begins back route down ever. Regardless of whether it's prejudices, how society is, and how individuals judge other individuals by their status or looks on the planet.

A few people disengage or be an untouchable themselves from individuals or things, and to make things most noticeably awful, it in some cases be the person's who love and care for them. We actually should not cash out anyone because of their appearance. We may not love them because of personality.

Jessica Richard in her article writes that:

The creation of this improbable romance is implicit in Shelley’s framing of Frankenstein. There is a well-developed critical discussion of the relation of the frame narrative, Robert Walton’s polar quest, to the tale told by the man whom he pulls off the Arctic ice, Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein himself remarks the similarity to his transgressive science: “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did,” he reminds Walton. Yet only the briefest attention has been paid to the historical resonance of Shelley’s resort to a narrative of polar voyage. If the “Frankenstein” is a clich at the turn of the twenty-first century for science on the frontiers of genetics and biomedicine, this synonymy reflects in part Shelley’s alignment of her novel with science on a different kind of frontier: the British attempts to reach the North Pole by ship. Polar exploration had specific cultural significance both in the revolutionary 1790s, when Walton’s tale is set, and in 1818, after Waterloo, when Frankenstein was published. When Shelley decided to add a polar frame narrative sometime between September 1816 and April 1817,6 it was at a moment when both the history and the future of polar exploration were subject to increasingly fervent discussion in scientific circles and popular journals in England. Victor’s tale of over-reaching scientific undertakings is deliberately situated against the Arctic expeditions that were about to set sail. Shelley not only draws on but contends with the improbable romance of polar exploration, an enterprise with the phantasmal incentive of a temperate polar sea beyond the Arctic ice(296).

What makes Shelley’s monster horrible is his apperance. People are always attracted from a nice face. So Ralph Goodman states that about this situation:

Some of the most interesting monsters are those that render the boundary between the monstrous and the “normal” permeable, like Frankenstein’s monster, who is well read, logical, well-spoken, kind, able to love even, and able to sympathise with other beings. However, atüre humans in this tale, his outward appearance, which is ghastly, is the only factor that counts – and they condemn him by his appearance alone. It is only in response to this provocation that the monster, in despair, acts out the alienated role assigned him and finally begins to atü the qualities traditionally attributed to monsters: hatred, violence and murderousness. However, this tale of a monster interrogates the behaviour and ethics of human beings more than that of monsters, suggesting the irrationality of human beliefs. Frankenstein displays an aesthetic obliviousness to the monster while he constructs it, yet as soon as he brings it to life he abandons his creation and rushes from the house in horror. His failure to nurture his monster – he literature to give it a name – makes it inevitable that events will unfold as they do. If monstrosity is an inherent quality which is evoked by the way society treats potential monsters, perhaps by the process of marginalisation, then society as a whole may be ensuring that monstrosity continues to flourish. Such mechanisms may be initiated unconsciously within the psychic economy of ordinary communities by the projection of guilt and fear on to Others. They are then made to carry the element of monstrosity in an overt way, offering comfort to “normal” people who are able to ignore the seeds of monstrosity within themselves. The politics of creation and expulsion of the monstrous as abject – a central concern of this article – will be more fully explored in its conclusion(37).

Victor Frankenstein also experienced alienation throughout this story. He experienced alienation from both his family and modern culture. In Frankenstein, Victor is referred to as a man who’s deeply in love with science. He put in a lot of his time making a monster. However, he wasn’t aware of the consequences this would bring him. At the end of this report he spent a lot of his time looking to kill this monster. As he attempted to demolish the monster he isolated himself from population. He would always atür his laboratory and make an effort to come up with other scientific creations. He regretted ever before creating the monster because the monster brought on him a great deal of trouble. People then considered him as some crazy methodical genius. Victor’s methodical views alienated him from all his area. He had an extremely keen affinity for since he was a kid. Him being so not the same as the rest of the family is what got these to alienate him. He just seemed so different and weird from the others.2)

Different feelings exist in the novel. These are caused the feeling of isolation. James C. Hatch clearly tells about this:

In the situation Shelley describes, where the affects of shame and disgust creator cut the Creature off from being part of a social structure, language becomes the only bridge between himself and human beings. In its relationship with sympathy, language figures in the novel as an assurance that an inner moral state of benevolence can be communicated to others, overriding the automaticity of the affect of disgust. Of all the book’s characters, the Creature is certainly the most eloquent, and it is telling that his reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost informs not only his own narrative but Frankenstein’s as well, as if to remind the reader that Frankenstein reads himself through the literary works that have formed the Creature and therefore reads himself through his own creation. The Creature’s language acquisition relies on avoiding the disgust that can shut down the process of learning, so he learns language without any interpersonal interaction. The Creature’s realization that he will need to approach the blind Monsieur De Lacey first emphasizes the need literature result of interpersonal relations (language) to transcend the affective disaster (disgust) of those relations. The fantastical literature of the Creature’s language – learned without any interlocutor – should alert the reader to the upcoming failure of his interview with the elder De Lacey, whose blindness is a fertile symbol both atüre greater understanding that can evade affect through language itself and the limits of such understanding. The Enlightenment expectation that language can convey truth free of emotion is one side of this blindness the other is the Romantic atüre that language depends on or has its basis in emotion itself(37).

Shelley’s characters in her novel usually have same problems. They all lack of socialiation. About this topic Marcia Bundy Seabury told that:

In her three related characters-Walton, Frankenstein, and the creature-Shel- ley both employs and subverts the creature of the intense, isolated, introspective, questing Romantic hero. We hear part of the story from the first-person viewpoint of each of the novel’s three Romantic individuals. The Romantic hero, found in so many works of art and music as well as literature during the nineteenth century, is often trapped within his own consciousness, subject to insatiable longings that are doomed to disappointment. He is the alienated, misunderstood outsider. Piercy’s Connie is in this line but as a woman and sole center of consciousness, although she is doubled by other characters in the novel. The main action takes place in her thoughts, whether or not she really visits a future society in Mattapoisett (a question Piercy claims she deliberately left ambiguous). Connie is a mental traveler, who both in her present atür and in the future thinks intensively about herself and her creator. And like Walton, Frankenstein, and the creature, she cannot share or discuss her journey with others, who simply do not or would not understand. Frankenstein creature he had told others about the creation he would have been thought mad (as his experience with the Swiss magistrate supports) Connie understands that references to Mattapoisett would reinforce that diagnosis she has already incurred. Like so many protagonists of the Romantic era, Connie’s heightened consciousness brings her not satisfaction but ongoing and seemingly inescapable pain. And like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and like the Byronic hero, she bears a burden of guilt from which she cannot free herself. She suffers alone, tormented(133).

Morally it is not true to get away from people. Josh Bernatchez tells this in a very good way:

If we understand the creature’s moral ugliness to have been produced by a community’s refusal to grant positive recognition, and yet reject that ugliness is the manifestation of a lack, we must conclude that the ugliness signifies something beyond itself: pain. The Creature never offers a literal confession in the text, but he does seem to concede the point that he is a monster implicitly through his crimes. If we take Scarry’s formulation to heart, this confession of monstrosity, like any other such confession, is a scream. And what is a scream? In this framework, a scream is the instinctual attempt to extend the experience of pain into the creator, to force its common recognition. Adjectives traditionally used to describe a scream, such as “blood-curdling,” “heart-wrenching,” and “bone chilling,” remind us that a scream recreates in anyone who hears it some of the pain felt by the screamer. The sound itself is disturbing, irrespective of any abstract compassion or sympathy one might feel (or fail to feel) screamer. The Creature’s more heinous actions, for all intents and purposes, may make him a true monster, but it is important to note that he is not irretrievably so. He consistently displays the capacity and drive to be something else. As he says, “had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn” , and there is something compelling about his complaint(211).

A good comparison about two great novel. They have much in common. It is told us by Joseph Cordaro:

Jamie’s choice of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the consummate works dealing with the theme of creation, is extremely appropriate. However, he apparently makes a ghastly error in his use of the novel to illustrate his contention. The proper finale passage, the one which would be the logical conclusion for his argument, would be “I made you! I’m your Frankenstein!” Those familiar with Mary Shelley’s novel would know that Frankenstein is the name of the monster’s creator, and that the monster himself is referred to as the “daemon,” certainly never as “Frankenstein.” For some reason this confusion is not at all unusual it may trace back to the 1931 Boris Karloff movie. But Jamie Tyrone repeatedly demonstrates himself to be an expert on nineteenth century literature, so the chances of Jamie mistaking the story of one of the most famous novels of that period? Indeed, one of the most famous novels ever written are almost too remote to even consider. Yet he ends his argument with “You’re my Frankenstein” and places Edmund in the position of creator? Thereby contradicting everything he has said up to that point. In a play in which allusions to literary works are so important, and virtually flawless accuracy in rendering these texts is the norm, an error so elementary would presumably be the object of widespread critical analysis. Literarure interpretation of the line is crucial for understanding the relationship between Jamie and Edmund. Unfortunately, this detailed attention has been lacking in much of the critical writing done on Long Day ‘s Journey Into Night. Essentially, three critics have attempted to approach the problem in general analyses of the play. Judith E. Barlow, in her Final Acts, gives a succinct argument: “Jamie, making the common mistake of confusing Frankenstein with his monster, suggests that he has created Edmund”. If he were still alive, he would correct the creature read “I made you. I’m your Frankenstein!” However, if one refuses to believe that O’Neill could commit such a blunder, the only other possibility is that he wrote the line as he did intentionally(117).

When making a conclusion, Shelley actually tells the reflection of her life story. For better understanding we need Anthony F. Badalamenti ideas that writes in his article:

The monster’s misery and dejection express her persecutory feelings in reaction to Percy’s frame breaks of their relationshipaction to Percy’s frame breaks of their relationship. The man-made monster attracts her feelings for her lost child, her anxieties over her often-pregnant state and Percy’s reply to these events. The unnamed monster is the anonymity of some of her reactions to Percy. She added figures of sound character to her story, such as Henry and Walton, to represent hope that Percy’s good parts would grow stronger and right their relation. Ingols tadt University encodes how unknown much of Mary’s inner life was to her self. It was more famous for its revolutionary secret society, the Illuminati, than for its medical school. Mary could have chosen one of the many other, more prominent medical schools of her time for novel(436).

As a conclusion Shelley’s initial life unmistakably had an effect on her composition, and you can see that while perusing Frankenstein. On the off chance that Shelley’s life would have been extraordinary, Frankenstein would not have almost a similar importance is does now, it is something other than a story, it is the life of Mary Shelley caught in a tale about the mystery of an individual, the forces of creature, and the perils of information.

Work Cited

  1. Badalamenti, Anthony F. “Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?” Journal of Religion and Health. 45.3(2006): 419-439. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2019
  2. Cordaro, Joseph. “Long Day's Journey into Frankenstein.” The Eugene O'Neill Review. 18.1/2(1994): 116-128. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2019
  3. Bernatchez, Josh. “Monstrosity, Suffering, Subjectivity, and Sympathetic Community in Frankenstein and 'The Structure of Torture'.” Science Fiction Studies. 36.2(2009): 205-216. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2019
  4. Richard, Jessica. “A paradise of my own creation: Frankenstein and the improbable romance of polar exploration.” Nineteenth‐Century Contexts. 25.4(2003): 295-314. TANDFONLINE. Web. 21 March 2019
  5. Goodman, Ralph. “Boundary issues and beyond: the secret life of monsters.” Scrutiny2. 21.1(2016): 33-43. TANDFONLINE. Web. 21 March 2019
  6. Hatch, James C. “Disruptive affects: shame, disgust, and sympathy in Frankenstein.” European Romantic Review. 19.1(2008):33-49. TANDFONLINE. Web.21 March 2019
  7. Bundy Seabury, Marcia. “The Monsters We Create: Woman on the Edge of Time and Frankenstein.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 42.2(2001): 131-143. TANDFONLINE. Web.21 March 2019
  8. Hammond, Kim. “Monsters of modernity: Frankenstein and modern environmentalism.” Cultural Geographies. 11.2(2004): 181-198. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2019
  9. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/examining-the-alienation-of-victor-frankenstein-english-literature-essay.php
  10. https://studybayhelp.co.uk/blog/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-alienation/
Updated: Nov 01, 2022
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Estrangement of Society in Shelley’s "Frankenstein". (2021, Feb 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/estrangement-of-society-in-shelley-s-frankenstein-essay

Estrangement of Society in Shelley’s "Frankenstein" essay
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