Frankenstein Contents
- Social / political context
- Religious / philosophical context
- Literary context
- The Bible: Creation: see Religious / philosophical context
- The Prometheus myth
- The doppelganger
- The monster's reading: Plutarch, Milton and Goethe
- The Romantics: Coleridge, Lamb, Southey, de Quincey
- Introduction
- Title page to the first edition
- Preface
- Volume 1
- Volume 2
- Volume 3
More on the reader's attitude to the creature
More on the reader's attitude to the creature:
Mary Shelley, as so often in the novel, manipulates the reader's sympathy for the creature in more than one direction.
- his loneliness is quite likely to arouse the reader's pity;
- the violence of his reactions – burning the de Laceys' cottage and wishing to destroy the forest – are violent but remain understandable;
- his rescue of the drowning girl demonstrates that his fundamental reactions are virtuous, while his sufferings after he is wounded by her companion are likely to arouse compassion;
- his hope that William Frankenstein is too young to have ‘imbibed the horror of deformity' shows that he continues to be optimistic about the innocence and spontaneity of children;
- in his plan to capture and educate William, the creature shows little sympathy for his family;
- his immediate change of feelings when he learns William's identity shows that he is very dangerous and that his desire to avenge himself on Frankenstein outweighs all other considerations;
- he is momentarily softened by the portrait of William and Victor's beautiful mother, but once again his feelings of revenge prevail and he plants the portrait in Justine's clothes.
