Motherhood & Monster
Motherhood can be one of the most beautiful and horrific things that can be found in nature. The creation of new life is a mystery we have pondered for many years. The changes in the female body and mind is like the blooming of a fresh spring flower. For some it will blossom sweetly for others it will wilt and fade darkly. Even in nature, new birth is seemingly celebrated by the seasons. From the cold death of winter, comes a new life in spring. This remarkable transformation can be seen in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein gathers up the pieces and parts of dead bodies and reforms them into a new hideous being. In a way, he can be seen a becoming a new mother. A mother that is frightened of his …show more content…
(Shelley 220)” This is the heart wrenching words uttered by the poor monster. This feeling of a stolen life, haunts him. This hatred of man. The feeling that man is attempting to steal the place of women is felt by Mellor. She does not feel the soft divided of motherhood, buts feels Victor Frankenstein to be a man of his times, who wishes to hold down and eliminate women in their sole role of the creation of new life and people. “The destruction of the female implicit in Frankenstein’s usurpation of the natural mode of human reproduction symbolically erupts in his nightmare following the animation of his creature (Mellor)” We can see that immediately after the monsters birth, Frankenstein is punished by his own mind in a dream for trying to upset the balance of nature. “I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms. (Shelley 84)” It is a feeling of killing motherhood, a punishment of seeing his own mother, a change from Elizabeth, whom now would never be a mother due to Victor Frankenstein’s actions. “… Because Frankenstein cannot work and love at the same time, he fails to feel empathy for the creature he is constructing… He then fails to love or feel any parental responsibility for the freak he has created. (Mellor)” We return once again this repeated theme of stolen motherhood, and abandonment. Victor Frankenstein is not a good mother. He does not once consider his own “child’s” feelings towards loneliness or kinship. As a mother who could not even handle one child, he refuses to bring another into this world. “I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate (Shelley 174)” He was worried once
Motherhood can be one of the most beautiful and horrific things that can be found in nature. The creation of new life is a mystery we have pondered for many years. The changes in the female body and mind is like the blooming of a fresh spring flower. For some it will blossom sweetly for others it will wilt and fade darkly. Even in nature, new birth is seemingly celebrated by the seasons. From the cold death of winter, comes a new life in spring. This remarkable transformation can be seen in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein gathers up the pieces and parts of dead bodies and reforms them into a new hideous being. In a way, he can be seen a becoming a new mother. A mother that is frightened of his …show more content…
(Shelley 220)” This is the heart wrenching words uttered by the poor monster. This feeling of a stolen life, haunts him. This hatred of man. The feeling that man is attempting to steal the place of women is felt by Mellor. She does not feel the soft divided of motherhood, buts feels Victor Frankenstein to be a man of his times, who wishes to hold down and eliminate women in their sole role of the creation of new life and people. “The destruction of the female implicit in Frankenstein’s usurpation of the natural mode of human reproduction symbolically erupts in his nightmare following the animation of his creature (Mellor)” We can see that immediately after the monsters birth, Frankenstein is punished by his own mind in a dream for trying to upset the balance of nature. “I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms. (Shelley 84)” It is a feeling of killing motherhood, a punishment of seeing his own mother, a change from Elizabeth, whom now would never be a mother due to Victor Frankenstein’s actions. “… Because Frankenstein cannot work and love at the same time, he fails to feel empathy for the creature he is constructing… He then fails to love or feel any parental responsibility for the freak he has created. (Mellor)” We return once again this repeated theme of stolen motherhood, and abandonment. Victor Frankenstein is not a good mother. He does not once consider his own “child’s” feelings towards loneliness or kinship. As a mother who could not even handle one child, he refuses to bring another into this world. “I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate (Shelley 174)” He was worried once