Josephine Padgett

Dr. Helen Lovejoy

Honors English 101
5 November 2014
Fractured Humanity as Monstrosity:
The Dissolution of Frankensteins Integrity
Mary Shelleys Frankenstein contains multiplicities of monsters. These monsters hide in
the characters, the narration, the settings, and even in the ornate structure of the text itself. The
most egregious of these monsters, though, is Victor Frankenstein. His immoral actions and lack
of moral responsibility towards his creation highlight an important aspect of humanity: what can
occur when we neglect our moral obligations and fail to take responsibility for our disasters. The
moment of the birth of the creation is a crucial one that acts as a catalyst for the plethora of
despair and destruction that plagues the rest of the novel. What kind of a man throws his entire
being into creating something so exhaustive, so huge and so glorious, just to run away as soon as
the task is done? Shelley leaves a trail of clues throughout the text as to the moral repugnancy of
Frankenstein, however, thinly veiled by admissions of love and admiration by various members
of his family and acquaintances. Through the actions and thoughts in Frankensteins narrative,
readers can witness the corruption of his moral and personal integrity aggregate into the heinous
monster intended to keep us up at night.
The concept of integrity comes from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or one.
In this way, to be without integrity would be to be cut off from a wholeness of being. As a child,
Frankenstein had a close-knit family. He characterizes his parents, his cousin and his friend,
Clerval, as all possessing a great deal of personal integrity and warmth. Victor holds dear his

familial ties; thus, when his mother dies of scarlet fever, a great crack runs down the foundation
of his personal core. After the death, he states, I need not describe the feelings of those whose
dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the
despair that is exhibited on the countenance (43). It is apparent that his mothers death has some
sort of an effect on Victor. He speaks quite eloquently about what it looks like to grieve,
although the particular words he uses to describe this grief leave a bit of an apathetic taste in our
mouths as readers. Why doesnt he feel it necessary to describe his grief fully? This, I would
argue, could be considered our first taste of Victor the manipulator, the sociopath, the narcissist.
Perhaps he doesnt feel much of anything; perhaps he is conning his audience into believing he
has a human capability for empathy and grief. He certainly shows us later in his story that his
capacity for empathy is meager at best. Whether we believe him, it is after this great tragedy that
Victor begins the next chapter of his life as a fractured person, beginning to isolate himself
further and further from humanity and pursuing questionable personal glory.
Frankenstein leaves the familiar faces of his home life and sets out for Ingolstadt in the
pursuit of knowledge. It is here in this isolation that Victor discovers the secrets that unlock
the mystery of animated life. It is evident that his seclusion and fervent obsession have channeled
his once familial and curious self into a monstrous fiend lacking any moral integrity. Instead of
pursuing knowledge for the benefit of the scientific community and mankind, Frankenstein sets
about creating not restoring life for his own personal glorification. Because Frankenstein
rejects the audience of colleagues, friends and family, hording his knowledge of the elixir of life
he cuts himself off from his own role in humanity ensuring the erosion of his personal
integrity, as he is no longer whole. In an essay about the body of knowledge in Shelleys
Frankenstein by Alan Rauch, Rauch concludes, By ignoring the humane qualities that clearly

make knowledge effective, particularly nurturing and caring, Frankenstein finds nothing
admirable in what should be a remarkable creation. Rauchs conclusion cuts right to the point:
Victor can only find significance in knowledge that mirrors what he holds as valuable. It comes
as no surprise then, that Frankenstein is disgusted by the creatures very real humanity and
needs, abandoning it and vainly hoping it will vanish on its own.
Although Frankensteins own daily needs are constantly met by characters in the novel,
he continuously neglects his obligations to others. He creates a pattern for himself of seclusion
and isolation, making it impossible to contribute anything to his family or society. This neglect is
evident in the lack of correspondence between Victor and his fiance, Elizabeth. She sends
letters to him throughout the novel, begging Victor to respond and ease her anxiety. One of her
letters states, Write, dearest Victor one line one word will be a blessing to us (69). And his
father begs Victor to come home: Come, dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth (76).
Victor does indeed periodically return home, only to sulk around a bit before heading back out
on his solitary meanderings posthaste. He doesnt seem to do much to console Elizabeth,
although she constantly attempts to console him. Frankenstein rejects whole aspects of human
naturenurturing, empathy, kindness and caringdenying a prodigious part of his humanity.
A particularly costly obligation Frankenstein neglects occurs after his abandoned creature
kills his brother, William, and frames another of Victors relatives, Justine, for the murder. No
one besides Victor and his creature knows the truth of what actually happened. As Justine is
tried, convicted and executed for the murder of William, Victor says nothing, not even speaking
up as a character witness in her defense. He reports in his narration to have rationalized this gross
lack of personal and moral integrity as the belief that he would be seen as a madman and not as a
credible witness. He exclaims A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of

the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration
would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who
suffered through me (85). This seems to be a convenient rationale. We are, on the surface, lead
to believe that Victor would have spoken up and saved this poor girl if it had been within his
power, although it is obvious at this point in the storyline that Victors view of responsibility has
shifted away from himself. At each moral crossroad, so to speak, he fails to act with honor or
integrity and shifts the blame from himself and his own action/inaction onto anyone and anything
else; he blames the monster, or the Angel of Darkness, some sort of ethereal forces of the
universe conspiring against him. Victors failure to own up to his responsibilities has left his life
spiraling out of control, creating a new obsession in him to find what he believes to be the source
of the problem, his creation, and rid the world of its wretchedness. It is easily argued though that
the real monster or Angel of Darkness and ominous cloud that the world needs to be rid of is
the moral corruption and fractured humanity residing inside of Victor Frankenstein himself.
Frankensteins callous view of all life other than for serving his own means is exhibited
when he is collecting materials to build his creature. His moral integrity is already so far
removed from his character that even the most heinous acts seem permissible to him. He states
offhandedly, I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave [and] tortured the living
animal to animate the lifeless clay (55). As he grows more frantic in completing his task, he
becomes desensitized to the horrors of his work, going so far as to torture animals for, we can
conclude, a smattering of inconsequential parts. As he is relating this part of his process to
Robert Walton, he feigns a nominal amount of guilt, but his actions speak infinitely louder than
his baseless words. Throughout his narrative to Walton, he makes it quite clear that any amount

of guilt he does feel about any of his actions is deeply rooted in the fact that the glory he dreamt
of even as a small child was never realized.
Shelleys novel asks readers to look deeper into the hidden meanings of what it is to be
monstrous and what makes something or someone a monster. We can easily find examples of
monstrosity on the surface of the text, although looking into the more subtle metaphors in the
work leads to an altogether more terrifying picture. Towards the end of the novel, Victor
Frankenstein selfishly agrees to build a female mate for his creature as a bargaining chip to
vanquish his creation from society and from Frankensteins life. After building the female in a
remote laboratory, Victor has the horrifying realization that he may not be able to control this
new creation any better than he has controlled the initial one. Realizing that animating this
female creature could potentially double the effects of the first one on his life, he rips the female
apart in front of her intended mate and swears never to create another. He leaves the laboratory
and made a solemn vow in my own heart never to resume my labours (180). Yet, the very
next day as he is taking his repose from preparations to depart from the remote isle from which
he has conducted his final experiments he idly sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning
and arranging my chemical apparatus (185). Here in lies the much darker and more insidious
monster that is in Victor Frankenstein. This seemingly innocent admission of truth hidden in an
otherwise pathologically false and painstakingly constructed narrative shines a ray of insight into
the true nature of Shelleys monster.

Works Cited
Rauch, Alan. The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Studies in
Romanticism, 14 (1995): 227-53. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2013. Print.