On Frankenstein

I'd read Mary Shelley's classic almost 10 years ago and I remember finding it a good book. I felt sorry for Frankenstein's monster but, in a more cynical take, focused on seeing how people in my online social circles seemed a lot like him.

Although my younger self was quite impressed with the book, I do not share much of that now. The male characters are clearly woman-like — from this book, I'd say Mary Shelley was not good at writing men. The way Victor acts is the way a very romantic woman would want a man to act when faced with tragedy. Most characters are quite predictable, too. Elizabeth, Clerval, and all the others are characters written to be quite similar. All of them have a very specific purpose in the narrative: moving Victor to suffer the most.

But I accept that. The monster, after all, is the real highlight.

There are many Frankenstein's monsters in the real world, or at least many with his psychology. Even though my joke about online circles could be summed up to "tfw no gf", it's deeper than that. The absence of a woman is not the monster's actual problem. You can easily see that through the De Lacey family. The monster idealized the life of average peasants, struggling through life, and yearned for the moment when they would accept him in spite of his physical wretchedness.

Of course, other than the blind elder, no one could get past his looks and see the kind and gentle creature that he once was. He was repulsive.

No one in their right mind would want to associate with that much of an outcast because, even if he was indeed acting in a good manner, it could only be due to evil schemes and ideas. He has to be fooling you, just look at him!

It's easy to empathize with the monster, but I believe most people would not be able to actually do it if it happened before their eyes. The halo effect has been known for over a century, making us assume that one positive trait, such as beauty, is necessarily correlated with other positive traits, such as morality. Frankly, to some extent this phenomenon is justified, as beauty is an aspect of wholesomeness and wholesomeness is an objectively positive trait, not to mention that a good appearance can signal biological traits of health or fitness in general, but it can hardly be the only dimension of analysis.

But the effect that is the most interesting to me is how the rejection blackens the heart of one who is ugly. In the monster's words,

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

At the end of the day, Frankenstein's monster proves that one cannot live without a social life. We are social animals, and we would be even if we were man-made abominations. As soon as we are conscious, we crave for warmth of companionship and, if that is denied, like the monster we have only our own makers to rebel against.

The rejects of society resent the ones who made them that way. They may have been benevolent and good; misery made them into fiends.

Although we can often identify with the monster's feelings, how many times did we actually see ourselves in the other end? How many people do we not like from their looks and generalize it through leaps of logic that make us despise their very being and everything they represent? Are we not close to the people who made him who he became?

Do we even suffer the same way that he does, or do we choose our own suffering by rejecting the hands that people offer us? Don't we prefer, at times, to reject the help that God sends us and "to rage against everything and be the one whom the whole world, all existence, has wronged"?

Are we not usually seduced by the idea of being an outcast, a damned person forever rejected and, therefore, justified in revenge? Even when we do not act upon this vengeful sentiment, do we not pat ourselves on the back for being such good people for not acting on it?

Often, yes, we are. Are we really rejected by everyone or do we just like the aesthetics of being a pure-but-damned soul?

There are many monsters who feel their happiness has been negated by society, and they are aware of what that would entail, and once the line is crossed, there isn't much holding them back from more and more degradation.

Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

Do these monsters not deserve our fair judgement?