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Book beginning: page 15

Introduction

The following is an alternative theory to the traditional one, it debates whether Victor and the monster are the same entity. Essentially, Victor would be the ‘good’ half and the monster blamed for any mishaps, permitting Victor’s memory to live on untarnished.

The story continues to be told on Victor’s deathbed, however, an idea is explored as to how Walton may be a doctor Victor is confiding in, as he has been locked up one last time to live out his final days in a mental institution.

A conclusion of the theory is given at the bottom of the page, what follows here are detailed bullet points that have helped to support this theory.

Characters

Victor’s madness

• Walton feared that Victor’s suffering had deprived him of understanding (p25).
• Walton says about Victor: “such a man has a double existence” (p29).
• When Victor laughs like a mad man he thinks he sees the monster (p61).
• Victor regularly fell into fits of madness (p61, p176, p198).
• Victor refers to “the fatal passion” (p62). This is mentioned shortly before he refers to “the fatal night, the end of my labours” (p67), indicating the fatal passion as the madness he possessed to create the monster, not the fit of madness afterwards.
• He was ill on the date of the monster’s creation (p77).
• Victor still appeared mad even when he was just melancholy (p152).
• Victor admits “I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true” (p178).
• Even Victor says he has gone mad (p190).
• By the end, Victor actually enjoys his delirium (p210) which is when this story is told.
• Victor says the monster was made “in a fit of enthusiastic madness” (p217).
• Victor continually reminds the reader that he is not mad.

Comparing similarities between characters

Victor and Walton

• Walton wanted to make a great discovery on “a land never before imprinted by the foot of man” (p16) and Victor wanted to “explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (p48).
• Walton wanted to help mankind with his discovery (p16) and Victor had hoped to do the same (p40).
• Walton says “I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage” (p17).
• Walton committed his body to hardship, voluntarily enduring “cold, famine, thirst and want of sleep” (p17).
• On page 17 Walton says he deserves to accomplish some great purpose; on page 210/11 Victor says when he was younger he believed he was destined for some great enterprise.
• Walton is headed for unexplored regions (p21) like Victor in his science experiment to create life.
• The lives of Walton’s crew depend on him and his mad schemes would be the cause of their death (p212).
• Walton says he would have “sacrificed [his] fortune, existence, every hope, to the furtherance of [his] enterprise. One man’s life or death were a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which [he] sought” (p28). Similarly, Victor’s endeavours began like this, saying wealth was an inferior object (p40) and what he desired was knowledge (p45). This is how, after his experience, he can now impart wisdom to others and correct them on their path to happiness by avoiding ambition (p217).

Victor and the Monster

• Firstly Victor says to Walton “listen to my history” (p30); and later the monster says to Victor “listen to my tale” (p101).
• To create the monster, Victor “infused a spark of being into the lifeless thing” (p57) and later on described his own state as if “the bolt had entered [his] soul” (p160).
• We see the demise of the two characters who both said they were originally good and benevolent (p90, 100), then read how Victor’s soul became woeful (p94), and how the monster was said to have become bad (p100).
• Victor is eloquent (p27) and can make a story come to life (p210); the monster is eloquent (p209).
• Victor’s temper was sometimes violent (p37).
• Victor gnashes his teeth (p25, p88, p92); the monster gnashes his teeth (p141, p167).
• Victor says on page 77 that he was not affected by the weather, and then again on page 97 he says “what were rain and storm to me?” Given how easily Victor gets ill, it is unlikely that this were true, it does however sound like the monster whose stature is better suited to withstand extreme weather conditions (p120).
• Victor says he sometimes wanders from home into the woods (p94); the monster regularly went into the woods (p114).
• The monster says he is alone (p100) and Victor tends to keep to himself as well (p150).
• The monster’s story about the first moments of his existence, sounds a lot like Victor’s at university where he is always learning from experimentation. The monster learns about the perks and dangers of fire (p104); and foods which are better cooked and those that are not (p105).
• When the monster is starting to learn French, he makes slow progress along side Safie’s learning, but with a positive attitude he focuses on the new words he did acquire (p117).
• With time, the monster committed his days to learning French and finally did so more quickly than Safie (p118); at Ingolstadt, the same thing occurred between Victor and his classmates in natural philosophy (p50).
• Victor and the monster were studying languages at the same time: the monster between finding the de Lacey family (p132) and William’s murder; Victor between recouping his health after creating the monster (p69) and William’s death.
• The monster, although in despair, says life is dear to him (p100), at the end Walton says Victor “talks as if life were a possession which he valued” (p213).
• The monster said death was the only way to overcome pain but it was a state he did not yet understand (p120). This is like Victor because although he could create life, he failed in his experiments to revive a dead corpse (p54), therefore he did not understand death either.
• The monster learnt how to cause mischief from books (p144); Victor’s knowledge of how to create life also came from studying.
• Victor is aware of his inner daemons and does not want to scare people with the truth about his activities at university, so he avoids including too many details in the conversation with his father (p185); this is not unlike the monster with his outward appearance, fearful of populated areas in case he should be met with harsh treatment (p118).

Victor, the monster, and Walton

• All three of them learnt languages.
• The monster throws himself into every venture full on, as does Victor when creating the monster and Walton when embarking on his sea-faring career (p17).
• Relationships with fathers: Victor mainly talks of his father (p31), most likely because his mother had died by the time the story starts; the monster only has a father; Walton’s father died leaving him in another male figure’s charge, his uncle (p17); Clerval also only speaks of his father (p44).
• Although at one point or another they all had some direction in their studies: Victor was self-educated in science (p40); the monster taught himself several areas of interest; and Walton says he is also self-educated (p19).
• Victor has his own solitary apartment at university (p45); the monster lived in his hovel; and Walton had his own cabin.

Comparing differences between characters

• Walton says he will make no rash decisions when it comes to his voyage, which shows consideration for other people’s safety (p21).
• Victor says it is his “temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach himself fervently to a few” (p37). However, Walton worked with a full crew on deck and the monster always pined to be part of society.
• Clerval was always interested in the moral side of things which he learnt from Elizabeth (p38).
• Victor did not keep regular correspondence with his family (p55), whereas, Walton always wrote to his sister, witnessed by the many letters the book is comprised of.
• Victor was not sure footed in the mountains or on ice, and procured a mule (a beast) to help him (p94). The monster, however, bounds across the ice with superhuman ease (p98).
• When in the final pursuit, the monster stole food from the village people and Victor made it clear that he had purchased any necessary goods (p206).
• Walton says at the end: you need glory and honour to succeed (p215), and is made to turn back home by his crew.

Other characters

• It is said by Walton that Victor had trouble keeping off the men aboard the boat when slightly recovered. Were they really cabin crew or doctors? (p25).
• Victor is uneasy with anyone but the captain, could this indicate his favourite doctor? (p27).
• Mr Kirwin’s description sounds a little like a doctors: “an old benevolent man, with calm and mild manners. He looked upon [Victor], however, with some degree of severity” (p174); “he had caused the best room in the prison to be prepared […] and provided a physician and a nurse” (p178).
• Victor at one point makes a connection between the magistrate he confesses his story to and a nurse’s behaviour (p201).

Why create Walton?

• Both of them together present the circle of life: Walton has the world in front of him, Victor’s life has come to an end (p29).
• Walton says he begins to love Victor like a brother (p27), is this to replace the one he killed (William)? Even though towards the end he states that no one can replace those who are gone (p211).
• Victor despised himself for being the slave of passion (p28) and perhaps wants to share his wisdom in an attempt at redemption, through guiding Walton back to the path of tranquillity.
• Walton learns from Victor’s mistakes, including ignoring the monsters eloquence (p219, p220).
• Victor fills Walton with sympathy (p27).
• Noticeably, the monster yearns to be listened to (p101), given that the purpose of the novel is to listen to Victor’s story, does he simply need someone to listen to him?

Needing a friend

• Victor does not make friends easily or have any left, so is it possible he invented one? A popular, well liked man, intelligent and hard working like himself, but also without friends so all his time is for Victor (p19).
• Walton states he needs a friend who is properly educated because he is self taught (p19).
• Walton was very sure he would not find a friend at sea (p19).
• Why didn’t Walton become friends with the lieutenant or the master aboard his ship that were mentioned in his second letter, if he were so desperate for a friend? (p20).
• The description in letter IV of Victor’s countenance makes him sound unloved and maybe desperate for a friend: “if any one performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up” (p25).
• Victor believed himself unfit for the company of strangers (p45).

Creating the monster

Why create the monster?

• Victor wanted to make man invulnerable to anything but a violent death (p40).
• Victor always has an excuse as to why he is miserable and nothing can be done about it (p91), is his weakness to take action or make decisions maybe why he needed the monster to begin with?
• Victor stated that “if our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free” (p97), was freedom a motive for creating the monster, as he acted on desire?
• If for no other reason, Victor could have created the monster as he “longed to enter the world, and take [his] station among other human beings” (p45). His success in such a venture would give him a prominent place not only among those around him but also in history.

Victor and the monster: the two as one

• Once the monster is created Victor seems to change completely, scaring Clerval with his unrestrained heartless laughter (p61).
• Upon recovery, Victor describes himself as returning to “the same happy creature” he was before he made the monster (p70).
• Victor’s reaction to how Justine feels about death is odd: he gnashed his teeth, and the groan came from his inmost soul (p88).
• Thinking of the monster made Victor vengeful (p92).
• The fiend lurked in Victor’s heart (p93).
• Victor says that his soul was in a state of woe and that it has “whirlwind passions” (p94).
• Victor would go to the woods or mountains as he sought relief in bodily exercise and a change of place, looking to forget himself and human sorrows (p94).
• Victor experienced a “littleness of feeling” which was uplifted by the sublime scenes of the mountains, and “although they did not remove his grief, they subdued and tranquillised it” (p96). This means Victor was made stronger by nature, which is where the monster resides.
• When Victor exclaims to the openness of nature, the monster appears (p98).
• The monster says to Victor “thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us” (p99).
• Victor is limitless when he is with the monster, expressed by the fact that his “rage was without bounds” upon seeing him (p99).
• The monster easily eluded Victor’s grasp (p99), given that Victor cannot fight him, must he give into the monster?
• The monster does not want to destroy Victor (p100).
• The monster says he “was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (p100).
• Only Victor can stop the monster from creating further destruction (p100, p101).
• Victor says to the monster “you have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you, or not” (p101), could this mean that the monster’s predominance to act on desire has taken over Victor’s decision making skills?
• As the monster went on studying, he learnt that “man […] appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another, as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike” (p119). He was learning about the duality that lies within all humans.
• While Victor was the slave of his creature, he allowed himself to be “governed by the impulses of the moment” (p153).
• The monster says he was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure (p142); Victor says he was formed for peaceful happiness (p160).
• The monster would only come when Victor was alone (p164).
• When Victor was honestly thinking of giving up on creating the female monster, the original monster appeared (p166).
• Victor says he does not know why he didn’t kill the monster (p168), and the monster does not know why he didn’t kill himself (p135).
• Victor thinks it is madness to create another monster (p166).
• The monster withdrew and all of a sudden Victor realises he is alone (p166).
• Victor cannot be made to perform an act of wickedness (p167), therefore he will remain good and the monster will have no companion in vice, if he commits an act of horror he will have to do so alone.
• Victor says to the monster “the period of your power is arrived” (p167), and shortly afterwards the monster says he is fearless (p168).
• When Victor is locked up, either in prison or in mental institutions, there are no deaths, it is only when Victor is able to roam around that people are murdered (p180).
• All the murders took place when Victor was not obsessing over guilt.
• Victor is now intimidating (p200).
• In the end, revenge was the only thing keeping either of them alive (p201).
• As Victor concluded his oath his “rage choked [his] utterance” and then he heard the monster’s laugh (p202).
• All the taunting the monster does to Victor in their final pursuit makes it seem like the monster needs Victor to survive (p204). If it really was just about revenge, wouldn’t the monster think he had done enough?
• When Victor is about to lose hope the monster always appears, but when he is about to catch the monster on the ice, it cracks (p207), extinguishing all hope of ever catching him.
• Conversations between Victor and the monster, is where he gave the most life to Walton’s notes (p210).
• By the end Victor no longer feels a “desire of revenge” (p217).

The monster is Victor’s soul: part 1

• Victor gnashed his teeth and gave a groan from his inner most soul (p88), projecting monster-like actions.
• Victor’s “prophetic soul” (p89) said more of his loved ones were going to die.
• As previously stated, the monster was infused with a spark of life (p57), and in chapter XIX Victor points out “I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul” (p160).
• When making the monster, Victor “seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (p54) that engaged his heart and soul (p55).
• Shortly before the pursuit, revenge is the only passion of Victor’s soul (p200). However, it was not his soul that wanted Victor to pursue the monster (p204), but it is what gave him the strength to (p201).

The monster is Victor’s soul: part 2

Passions manifest in Victor’s soul

• Victor is led by passion (p217) but the monster is instigated by an uncontrollable passion (p219), stating the monster is the slave not the master to it (p220).
• Victor is attacked by fatal passion (p62) whereas the monster is consumed by burning passion (p144).
• When Victor renews his request to Walton to kill the monster, he says he will leave it to Walton’s judgement and “dare not ask [him] to do what [Victor] thinks right, for [he] may still be misled by passion” (p217).
• In the final chapter, the monster relates the feelings he endured throughout his existence as “wasting in impotent passions” (p221).

De Lacey dynamic

The more the de Lacey family is described, the more they sound like the Frankenstein family, in appearance, heritage and jobs.

• Direct similarities between the de Lacey family and the Frankensteins: the de Laceys were French speaking and wealthy (p122) as were the Frankensteins (p179, p151); the monster saw few visitors come to the house (p112) which mirrors the Frankensteins’ chosen life of seclusion (p37); the old de Lacey encouraged the children out of their melancholy lapses (p112), much like Victor’s father was said to have done for them (p81, p185); old de Lacey was respected by all (p122), like Victor’s father (p31); The portrait of Victor’s mother has dark eyes and deep lashes (p143), baring the resemblance of Safie (p116); Justine as an outsider came to join the Frankenstein family (p65), as did Safie to the de Lacey family (p116); Felix served his country (p122), Ernest wanted to serve his but he was not permitted to (p64); Agatha ranked with others of high distinction (p122), and what the reader can understand from Elizabeth’s letter in chapter VI, she also held acquaintances in high society.
• No matter what the de Laceys were feeling, the monster’s stance was affected too: if they were unhappy, he was depressed, and when they rejoiced, he sympathised (p112) which is extremely similar to what Victor says of his own family (p89).
• The monster looked upon the de Laceys as “the arbiters of [his] future destiny” (p115).
• The monster says that none of the de Laceys’ smiles and conversation were ever for him (p121).
• Safie’s father was the ruin of the de Lacey family (p122), Victor was the ruin of his own family.
• Felix looked forward to his marriage as a consummation of happiness (p123).
• How do the letters the monster has prove the existence and story of the de Lacey family? (p123).
• Safie’s father is manipulative (p124/5).
• Felix could endure a life without fortune but not the loss of Safie (p126).
• Both the monster and Safie were ignorant of the customs and language of the Western world but fell into good hands (p127).
• The books the monster found were in French, given that they were in Germany at the time, it seems strange (p127).
• The monster's calculating plan to approach the de Laceys (p132).

The Story

Murders

Why start killing?

• Victor seems quite obsessed with dark beauties, maybe originating from his mother’s image, so when he saw William with his mother’s portrait, a boy so loved and cherished by the family (p66), is it possible he killed him out of jealousy?
• Elizabeth wrote in her first letter to Victor how he had always liked Justine (p65), and when describing her life says that Justine’s manner and expressions continually remind her of his mother (p66). To add to this, upon discovering the portrait of Victor’s mother, the monster compares Justine’s beauty to hers, overall giving the impression the two looked vastly alike.

So when the monster came across Justine after killing William, and says: “awake, fairest, thy lover is near-he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes” (p143), it raises the question if this was not Victor speaking from an unrequited infatuation? The text goes on to say “the fiend stirred within me […] because I am for ever robbed of all that she could give me” (p144).

• When Victor is waiting for the trial to begin to determine William’s murderer, he talks of the accused, Justine. He says she was “a girl of merit, and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy” (p81).
• Was Clerval murdered because he accidentally walked in on Victor with the second monster’s body and as such a moral character, Victor had no choice but to kill him? Clerval was desperate to return to Geneva (p170), so it is not unreasonable to think he may have gone to look for Victor without more precise notification.
• Again, Victor seems quite attracted to darker features, so would marrying the fair haired Elizabeth (his mother’s dying wish p43), have meant unhappiness for him, and he killed her out of despair?

Guilt

• Why is Victor’s reaction quite so dramatic when Justine is condemned? (p85).
• “The fatal night” the monster was created is the beginning of Victor’s misfortunes (p67) but it is from Justine’s death that Victor dates the miserable epoch of all his woe (p94).

Further Proof Victor is the Murderer

• Victor says he “wandered like an evil spirit” (p90) and then goes on to explain how he was originally benevolent, which sounds suspiciously like the monster, and ends his ramblings with his “sense of guilt”. He points out how this has taken its toll on his health that perhaps had never recovered.
• Justine would have been considered “a monster” if she had've committed the murder (p87), therefore, the killer was a monster even if they were human.
• Victor thinks it is impossible to pursue the monster successfully (p77, 78), so why does he send everyone to chase him after Elizabeth’s murder? (p196).
• Victor sends Elizabeth to bed alone and unprotected (p195), and no one else sees the monster (p196).

Questions

• No sooner had the thought popped into Victor’s head, than he thought the monster was the murderer, and the mere presence of the idea confirmed its truth. Why exactly is that all it takes? (p76).
• Why did Victor wait until everyone had died to take action? (When he confessed everything to the magistrate p199). And why did he show absolutely no concern for his surviving brother?

Confession

• Victor always has the perfect excuse to not confess about the monster as everyone would take it as “the ravings of a madman” (p81), evidenced by the part of the story he told his father (p186) and his confession to the magistrate (p201).

People seeing the monster

• The captain and crew saw the monster pass on the ice, and then when they find Victor, they say he was using a sledge like the one they had seen the night before (p24).
• No one appears to use the term “gigantic stature” to describe the monster until after they have been speaking to Victor. This can be seen on page 24 when Walton refers back to his sighting of the monster and says: a figure of “apparently gigantic stature”. However, on page 26 when relating his first actual conversation with Victor, supposedly word for word, he states that the figure upon the sledge was simply that of a man.
• None of the prints left on William’s, Clerval’s, or Elizabeth’s neck are ever noticed to be of super human size by any of the witnesses (p72, p175, 195/6).
• The monster refers to his own stature as gigantic (p128).
• All the witnesses in Ireland seemed convinced that Victor was the murderer (p173-76) and that they sailed in the same boat (p175). No one mentioned the figure seen that night as anything bigger than the average.
• None of the first villagers to see the monster during Victor’s final pursuit gave any descriptions of him (p203). However, one set of villagers gave accurate information, as Victor called it, limiting their description to “a gigantic monster” (p206).
• After a week of listening to Victor’s story (p210), Walton comes face to face with the monster, and instantly describes him as “gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions” (p218).

Questions raised

• Clerval endearingly invented stories to entertain others (p71), is it possible Victor did the same?
• Victor, alluding to it as his prophetic soul, is sure of more death to come, but how exactly is he capable of predicting this? (p89).
• Does Victor intentionally hinder himself when asking the magistrate for help, as he says no one can catch the monster (p200), and knows full well that if he cannot get help then he will have to pursue the monster alone?
• Did the monster not have just as much right as Victor to fall into fits of madness? However, he shows no signs of this type of weakness, just a desire for revenge.
• Is it a coincidence that the monster cannot form part of society and is made to roam nature?
• Given how much Victor mentions being afloat water and how peaceful it is for him, if this is in fact a fabricated story, would it make sense that he imagined dying aboard a ship far from land?
• When Victor was on his deathbed, he asked Walton to kill the monster (p217), however, when he appeared, Walton did not even make an attempt, he simply conversed with him at length and let him escape. Why would Walton do that, when someone who had become almost like a brother to him (p27), had requested he take action?
• If the two are the same person, then perhaps Walton could not bring himself to take the life of his friend. Does this means that in the end, the monster received the sympathy he had always craved?

Conclusion of this Theory

The overall theory of the story being told to a doctor is possible if the reader considers that when Victor’s father died and Victor was institutionalised towards the end of the story (p198), he may never have been released. This would mean that the "magistrate" he asked for help (p199/201), was in fact a doctor, who then sent him on to a specialist to attend to his condition. The notes Walton took (p210) would be those of the doctor from the therapy sessions.

The theory essentially incorporates the idea that the deaths and marriages of the Frankenstein family are true and it is the telling of the story that is delusional. Victor did not so much make the monster at Ingolstadt, as partly turn into it. With the freedom an adult university life brought him, Victor could have explored his inner most passions which he had repressed this far, bringing to the surface a dormant madness. We must remember that most of his adult life was then spent detained in prisons and institutions, and by the time this story is told he is enjoying his delirium (p210).

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Oxford World Classics, 1998.