On Dr. Frankenstein and a Female Creation

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2705 

Why did Dr. Frankenstein create a male and not a female being? I guess it would be easy to slip into a rolling piece of guesswork as to why the good doctor took on what he referred to as feminine Nature to substitute himself for the job and bring forth yet another male.

It is perhaps a little odd that Mary Shelley took this route, given her proto-feminist-founding mother and anarchist father, but then again her novel was published in 1818 when she was all of 21, which means she probably wrote it in her 'teens, which means there was only so much time at that point to have given much long thought to the rights of women ideas. Or not—this is purely speculative. In any event, I liked the idea of the question.

Victor Frankenstein did indeed nearly create a female being, and was half-way or so there. He wasn't a fan of this thinking earlier on in the novel, as we hear him addressing his Monster:

• “Abhorred monster fiend that thou art the tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil you reproach me with your creation come on then that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed...” (By the way, “sparks” is what brought the Frankenstein's creation to life, this being an early heyday of electricity, though “spark” is mentioned only three other times in the book.)

His creation pleaded with him for companionship, but old Dr. Vic thought better of the idea and destroyed “her”, ripping the new creation literally limb from limb. It is an unpretty story, though the case made to the doctor from his “monster” is excellent, and I include a good selection of the dialog below.

The Monster approaches Frankenstein with an idea for a companion:

• “What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate. I demand a creature of another sex but as hideous as myself the gratification is small but it is all that I can receive and it shall content me. It is true we shall be monsters cut off from all the world but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. O my creator make me happy let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing do not deny me my request.”

Frankenstein responds:

• I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow.”

The Monster replies with vows that include solitude and (basically) vegetarianism:

• “If you consent neither you nor any other human being shall see us again I will go to the vast wilds of South America food is not that of man I do not destroy the lamb and the kid glut my appetite acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food picture. I present to you is peaceful and human and you must that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and Pitiless as you have been towards me I now see compassion.”

And Victor:

• “You propose” replied I “to fly from the habitations of man to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions How can you who long for the love and sympathy of man persevere in this exile. You will return and again seek their kindness and you will meet with their detestation your evil passions will be renewed and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be cease to argue the point for I cannot consent.”

And the Monster:

• “How inconstant are your feelings. But a moment ago you were moved by my representations and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints. I swear to you by the earth which I inhabit and by you that made me that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighborhood of man and dwell as it may chance in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled for I shall meet with sympathy my life will flow quietly away and in my dying moments. I shall not curse my maker.”

Frankenstein returns:

• His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him but when I looked upon him when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations I thought that as I could not sympathize with him I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.

        “You swear” I said “to be harmless but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge...”

The monster:

• “How is this I thought I had moved your compassion and yet you still refuse to bestow on me the only benefit that can soften my heart and render me harmless' If I have no ties and no affections hatred and vice must be my portion the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes and I shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded...”

Finally, Victor Frnakenstein turns on himself and his creations, convinced that he would do the correct thing by stopping himself in the creation of another being:

• “I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant that her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form?”
• “Even if they were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the dæmon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?”--(pp 138-139)