Frankenstein

A Life Without A Birth

The 1818 classic novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, captures the devastatingly potent aftermath following a creation of life by artificial means, and the havoc the creation reaps within creator’s world. Though written and published long before the onset of the 20th or 21st century, the central themes and motifs are still a particularly relevant and are still studied today, especially the concept of an absent mother figure. Known as the prime bearer of life and the natural nurturer, the necessity of that role is uncontested and attests to the wreckage that results partly because of the emptiness when one is missing. Thus, this notion of a nonexistent mother image relates to the author’s own life narrative, which is likely to have influenced Shelley’s writing, though autobiographical correlations are not always necessarily intentional or meant to elude to that connection. Instead, they are made to provide some additional insight into the author’s mind frame to enhance the reader’s ability to frame context and allow for some loose connections. In the novel, the absence of the mother figure details the vitality of women involved in the birthing cycle and how society may be impacted with that void, as well as the emotional implications an absent mother has on the development and growth of a young child.

The beginning of the existence of Frankenstein’s creation centers upon the idea of giving life to an inanimate substance through the continual work of science and technology. Abandoning his family and personal life, Victor epitomized the parallel of creating life biologically, as instead of this creation uniting a family, it wedges more distance between them. The stormy setting of the evening when the monster was first created further indicates that this scientific breakthrough will be just the beginning of turbulent events to come. These are the first signs of foreshadowing that chronicles the implication of an unnatural