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Courtney Blakey
ENG 4930
Dr. Crone-Romanovski
10/27/13
Failing Fathers; Frankenstein and the Role of Fatherhood
When reading criticism on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one could note the large amount
of feminist critiques circulating the literary world. Many critics, such as Ellen Moers and Sandra
G. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, have touched on the birthing myth, the female experience and
perspective of birth, and Dr. Frankenstein as a feminine character. These critiques do an
excellent job of suggesting in what ways the monster’s birth and upbringing in the novel
comment on a woman’s role in the child bearing and rearing processes. However, while these
criticisms are valid and intriguing, what they leave out is any focus on the role of the father in
these processes and the blatant failure of father-figures in the novel. Instead of equating Dr.
Frankenstein to a feminized mother, I argue that he is indeed a father; albeit a failed one. In this
essay, I suggest that Dr. Frankenstein, whom I will call Victor, is not only a failed father-figure,
but also the epitome of criticism against absent father-figures and the reason why the monster
truly becomes a monster. What this does is suggest how important the role of the father is in
child rearing and how a failed father, especially an absent one, leads to imbalances in children
and possibility to devious behavior.
To more deeply look into the role of the father, I will compare some psychoanalytic
critiques to the father-son relationships in the novel. Many critics have studied the effects of
fatherhood on children, including Gary Dick, which can help us to look at some different ways
that fatherhood and childhood intertwine. In The Changing Role of Fatherhood, Dick argues that
the nature of fatherhood is changing and has been ever changing because it is reflective of a
historical time and place and social and cultural forces. That said, we must look at the confines
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of fatherhood as it appeared in the nineteenth century when Shelley was writing the novel.
Doing so, we can develop an idea of the definitions of both a failing and a successful father and
the implications that either would have on a child. One critic, Margaret Marsh, looked into the
cult of masculinity and the shift from domesticity to masculinity in the nineteenth century and
has said, “before the entrenchment of the ideology of domesticity in the second third of the nineteenth
century, fathers had maintained a large role in family government, but in the earlier period the emphasis
was on obedience, discipline, and the importance of the father's role as head of the household” (13).
With this idea, we can infer that a successful father in the early nineteenth century was one that
had authority as the “head of the household” but didn’t necessarily involve himself in the
domestic sphere as he would have been seen to do in later years. Here, the father’s main roles
were to exact rules, judgments, and punishments. As suggested by both Dick and Marsh, this
role of fatherhood had evolved over time, and is still evolving, but I think it is important to place
emphasis on this definition of a successful father in the nineteenth century because it can also
help us understand the definition of a failed father. With the current definition, a failed father
would then be implied to be one that does not hold any authority in or outside of the domestic
sphere—that is one who couldn’t uphold either “obedience” or “discipline.” We will look at the
issues of failed authority when looking at Victor’s father further on, but it is crucial to see that
according to this definition none of the fathers in Frankenstein can be coined as “successful
fathers” even though some seem to begin to engage more so in the domestic sphere.
Writing about the present time period, Dick takes a psychoanalytical approach to show
how the role of father is socially constructed and the ensuing effects of fatherhood on children.
He argues that the father functions in a way that provides “important psychological sustenance”
that greatly impacts the child and the child’s sense of self (3). This statement directly links the
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idea of the father with being responsible for the well-being of his child because whether he
intends it or not, he provides the psychological sustenance that will make up how his child will
see him or herself. In The Changing Role of Fatherhood, Dick cites several instances of failing
fathers to be such as those who neglect and/or reject, abuse, or abandon their children. He states
that:
[R]egardless of whether the father was unknown, dead, living in the home, or
abandoned the child, the one dynamic that crosses all forms of father loss is that
the father is unavailable as a selfobject and therefore fails to contribute psychic
energy toward the psychological self-structure of the child. 7
What Dick proposes by the idea of selfobject is being linked to the internal development of how
one establishes “self.” This means that the father’s identity also determines that of the child’s
because the child bases some aspects of “self” on the father. In accordance to determining self,
Dick also proposes that when there is “paternal deprivation,” or abandonment by father whether
he is “unknown,” “dead,” etc., the child is affected by a faucet of possible scenarios such as low
self-esteem, sense of loss, Oedipal fantasies, aggressive behavior, and loss of empathy (3, 5-6).
In the novel, we see that Victor voluntarily rejects the role of his father when he feels rejected by
his father because his father disapproves of his studies and sends him away to school at
Ingolstadt (Shelley, 25). After being “rejected” by his father, Victor’s behavior throughout the
novel can seem devious enough in his inability to place any blame on himself and his desire to
pursue forbidden sciences and mysteries. In this line of thought, we can attribute Victor’s bad
choices, such as not opting to kill the monster from the beginning, keeping the monster secret,
and allowing others to pay for the crimes of the monster, to his psychology of being an
“abandoned” child.
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By looking at both Victor’s relationship with his father and the monster’s relationship
with Victor, we may be able to pinpoint preexisting attitudes about fatherhood and how a
“failed” father can lead to faulty sons. Though Victor begins his tale with a wonderful account of
his father, he is friendly, loving, and respectable (Shelley, 18-19), he shortly thereafter begins to
blame his father for most of his misfortunes. In fact, he implies that had his father “taken the
pains” to suggest a better route of study, he may never have been in the predicament of creating
the monster in the first place (Shelley, 22). This is, after all, because the study of natural
philosophy is where Victor’s enthrallment began and how he eventually came to study and
ascertain the secrets of producing life. When he first began to read Cornelius Agrippa, a
disreputable choice of scientist as most in the novel declare, Victor’s father did little to dissuade
him from pursuing Agrippa’s subject matter other than insisting that he not “waste his time” on
that “sad trash.” This may seem disapproval enough; however, Victor recalls this scene
somewhat differently:
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me, that the
principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of
science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the
ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the
former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have
thrown Agrippa aside, and which my imagination warmed as it was, should
probably have applied myself to the more rational theory of chemistry which has
resulted from modern discoveries. It is even possible, that the train of my ideas
would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. 22
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Here, Victor clearly states that if his father would have been able to exercise better authority of
him and his choices, he would “certainly have thrown Agrippa aside” and rendered his
intellectual pursuits to a better-suited science, like chemistry. Instead, he ignores his father’s one
time plea and continues on with his own “fatal” intentions, which eventually leads to his “ruin.”
An interesting dynamic to analyze here is the issue of authority. Consequently, looking back to a
time period which suggested that maternity held sole responsibility and culpability inside the
home (domesticity in the early nineteenth century) especially in regards to child rearing, the
paternal figure of the household always held the authority or, as Marsh says, was head of the
household. What the father said was what was done despite being in or outside of the domestic
sphere, and when ignored there was surely discipline to be had. Sadly, Victor’s father does little
to stop him from pursuing bad sciences; which includes his failure to logically reason with
Victor on why such sciences should not be studied. Victor’s failure to do as his father suggests
could be based on the fact that in the first place it was only suggested and not demanded. In a
later instance Victor says, “my father was easily induced to comply; for a more indulgent and
less dictatorial parent did not exist upon earth” (Shelley, 109). Here, we may link discipline with
dictatorial because a dictator exacts punishment and holds others under strict compliance.
Though no one wants a dictator for a father, the nineteenth century definition of a successful
father, as we saw, is one that carries out discipline and requires obedience. Therefore, because
Victor’s father is too “indulgent” (or perhaps complacent), he is a failed father-figure. In that
case, Victor is almost right for blaming his father for not more fully putting a stop to his reading
of alchemy because his father’s failure to do so is the failure of authority and thus fatherhood all
together. This failure of authority also can be seen as Victor’s father becoming an absentee
father, for while physically present, he yields no control over his son at all. After this point,
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Victor chooses to totally disregard his father and make his own choices, including the choice to
hide his monster-making from his father.
Similarly, the issue of an absent father, or one with no authority, also comes into play
with the idea of being rejected by the father. In Frankenstein, Victor feels rejected by his father
early on in life when he is sent to Ingolstadt. His arrival at Ingolstadt closely follows the death
of his mother, and he begins to feel as if his place at the university is actually a place of isolation.
“I was now alone. In the university, whither I was going, I must form my own friends, and be
my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic; and this had
given me invincible repugnance to new countenances” (Shelley, 27). At Ingolstadt, Victor was
cut off from his family and from familiarity. He left the “domestic” life of the country in Geneva
to the populated university life where he chose not to make new acquaintances but to seek out
churchyards instead. The text suggests that his pursuit of the churchyard and the mysteries of
life stems from the death of his mother; however, what is interesting is that the novel also shows
this as a result from the loss of father as well. At school, Victor is cut off from any remaining
authority or influence his father might have, and thus is free to live by his own ideals of right and
wrong. His devious behavior is that of studying graveyards and dead bodies to learn the
mysteries of life that none should be privy too. In a way, this could be seen as direct defiance of
his father as we recall that Victor’s father calls this type of science both “sad trash” and a waste
of time. Along the way, Victor completely disassociates with his life back home, especially his
father, and forms his own authority and influence. (Notably, he also picks up the vices of pride
and flattery along with his newfound authority and influence.) When he finally creates the
monster, he becomes the ultimate pinnacle of authority as he becomes a father in his own right.
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William Veeder argues that Victor ultimately fulfills the “negative Oedipus complex”
because instead of killing the father to get to the mother he essentially (metaphorically) kills the
father in order to become the father of himself (Veeder, 16). In this claim, Victor creates the
monster in order to make himself the father of himself (as the monster is supposed to be a
representative of Victor) and ultimately erases his own father. This claim, though complex and
seemingly abstract, actually makes a lot of sense given that Victor not only blames his father for
much of his life occurrences but also that he sees his father as inadequate. To justify himself as a
father, Victor says:
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a
hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal
bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our
dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy
and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the
gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their’s. 33
In this passage, Victor not only justifies himself as a father but claims that because he can create
a whole “species” that it utterly dependent on him, no one “deserve[s]” to be called a father more
than himself. We can also see in the passage, that before the actual creation of the monster,
Victor is truly enthused about creating life and assured of the “happy and excellent natures” that
he thinks are inevitable results of this creation. Thus, in Victor’s eyes, the idea of a successful
father appears to be one that defies the “bounds” of life and death and can create “light” out of
“dark.” This type of fatherhood is quite radical from the definition of successful fatherhood that
we have so far examined and seems to be more fantastic than realistic. We can put this in stark
comparison to the roles of fatherhood that Victor acknowledges his own father to have—which
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mostly includes the duty of ensuring the education of his children. Indeed, Victor says, “my
father directed our studies, and my mother partook of our enjoyments” (Shelley, 24). Here,
interestingly enough, the mother is not responsible to directing her children’s education, which
might have been seen as under the hood of “domestic” duties, and is instead responsible only for
the children’s “enjoyments.” This shows one of the ways in which fatherhood might have been
evolving during this time period because we start to see the father more so enter the domestic
domain and take on more responsibilities, like education, pertaining to children. However, even
with that said, Victor still claims that he is a better father than his own, perhaps because he still
blames his father for not having enough authority and influence over him in spite of his
involvement in his life (and perhaps precisely for being responsible for his education without
warning him of the consequences of the studies he chose!).
At this point, we can begin to look at Victor’s relationship with the monster, or, more
appropriately for this argument, his son, in order to pick up the pattern of how failures as a father
render children truly monstrous. As stated earlier, Victor’s first failure of the monster is neglect
and abandonment. As soon as the monster comes to life, Victor is disgusted with him and runs
away. Here, some critics liken Victor to a mother with post-natal syndrome, but I see this
scenario as more of the panic-stricken father running away from the sudden responsibility of
fatherhood. Though we may see this often enough in modern times, we might be able to imagine
a paternal anxiety that fathers may have felt when necessity required them to submit themselves
to the domestic roles that their wives would have been occupying in the nineteenth century (such
as in the case of a death of the mother). To link this with Victor, after the “birth” of his son, he
realizes that he is the sole caretaker and responsible party of his creation and decides to flee from
his sudden obligations. He says, “I felt the bitterness of disappointment: dreams that had been
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my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now become a hell to me; and the change
was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!” (Shelley, 36-37). What sticks out here is Victor’s
resentment to the “change” that became a sudden hell to him. The change he may be referring to
could be fatherhood as a whole because fatherhood certainly is a big change for many a first time
parent. All of a sudden, the parent has to makes choices not only for his or her own better good
but for that of his or her child also. Further condemning himself in the novel, Victor not only
abandons his child after birth but also prays to escape seeing him ever again, or at least until he is
ready for revenge. As is indicated in Dick’s study on paternal deprivation, the psychology of the
son after such an abandonment would be severely altered. Dick claims, “It is especially painful
for the child when the father chooses to disengage…When a father abandons his child, the
vitalizing and soothing experiences that once could have emulated from him leave the child
vulnerable in times of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear” (7). If we study the monster’s behavior and
attitudes in the novel, we can see that he does indeed exhibit some of the negative effects Dick
proposes an abandoned child might experience.
In fact, we can see how the monster seems to be affected by the many factors such as low
self-esteem, a sense of loss, aggressive behavior, loss of empathy, and a lust for vengeance. In
regards to low self-esteem, the monster experiences his first pangs of self-loathing after he
encounters the sight of the lovely and beautiful De Lacey family. He says, “I had admired the
perfect forms of my cottagers…but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself in a transparent
pool...and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled
with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification” (Shelley, 78-79). So, not only
does the monster feel unworthy to be seen by the “perfect forms” of the De Lacey’s, which
contributes to a feeling of low self-esteem, he also admits to feeling “despondence” and
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“mortification” over his appearance and what he believes this appearance implies about himself;
namely, that he is a “monster”. The monster also feels a sense of loss, especially in observing
the De Lacey family, when he realizes that he does not have a father or mother, or even know of
who created him. This creates an even deeper psychological issue as it makes him question his
origin and consequently what Dick calls the “self” (Dick, 3). Understandably, these negative
feelings about the self could have caused him to act out aggressively because he is missing out of
the fundamental need of acceptance. Being abandoned by his father, which I will discuss more
shortly, the monster seeks to lash out against the fact that he has no one to look after him and
help him when others will not. His aggressive behavior includes his feelings of destruction, his
sworn vengeance against mankind, his burning of the De Lacey cottage, and eventually his
murders of William, Clerval, and Elizabeth. But the monster is not unconscious of his
aggression. After cursing his creator for his cruelness he says,
I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils; destroying the objects that
obstructed me, and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness…I, like
the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathized with,
wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to
have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. 95
At this point, the monster has lost the empathy the he once felt for mankind. Now, not
only does he demonstrate his aggression, he actually “enjoy[s]” it. He declares himself a
“fiend;” one whose purpose is to “spread havoc and destruction” because he is only filled
with rage—not remorse. For once he “could not conceive how one man could go forth to
murder his fellow,” but now he is completely consumed by his “daily vows [for]
revenge—a deep and deadly revenge” (Shelley, 83, 99).
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But let’s take a moment to look at this more from the monster’s perspective. From the
monster’s point-of-view, readers are finally introduced to the child’s understanding of being
rejected and abandoned by a father-figure. Frankenstein’s monster grieves that he did not have a
father, never did know him, and when we has introduced into the world, he was rejected by it
also. In relating his tale to his father at last, he says, “But where were my friends and relations?
No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses, or if
they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing”
(Shelley, 84). At this moment in the past, the monster was left not only questioning his origin
but also who and what he was. He was neglected before he could gain any concept of “self” and
so had to create his self through his experiences in the world. Unfortunately, the world was not
any kinder than his father. After the world of civilized men rejected him again and again, he lost
not only self-confidence but also hope of ever finding love and acceptance. After being shot by a
“rustic” for trying to help a little girl from drowning, the monster exclaims, “The feelings of
kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained but a few moments before, gave place to hellish
rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all
mankind” (Shelley, 99). With this as yet another instance of injustice towards him, the
“monster” is then truly born as all of his empathy is destroyed and he swears “eternal”
vengeance.
For all of this and more, the monster blames Victor, and we can see the monster’s acts of
violence and murder as pure vengeance against the father and the world that so hurtfully rejected
him. To the monster, Victor was both “tyrant” and “tormentor,” and the one that he would
inevitably destroy for being so (Shelley, 121). In another essay, emphasizing father-son
allusions in Frankenstein, Terry W. Thompson looks at the ways Victor and his monster are very
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much like the legendary King Arthur and Sir Modred. Thompson argues that Victor and his
monster are most like King Arthur and Sir Modred compared to other mythical father-son
pairings because the sire creates his own destroyer in both stories. Thompson proposes that like
King Arthur, Victor neglects his “son,” and thus the son becomes dangerous and monstrous.
According to legend, because Sir Modred was born a legal bastard, King Arthur willfully sends
his son away and refuses to acknowledge him as a son. Hurt and rejected, Sir Modred grows up
with a powerful vengeance against his father whom he ultimately plans to meet in battle and
destroy. In his essay, Thompson argues that in both King Arthur’s story and in Frankenstein the
sons seek vengeance upon their fathers for failure of “paternal duties” (3). Thomas would
suggest that the consequences of failed paternal duties lead to many possibly monstrous actions
such as murder, insubordination, and vengeance; however, I would suggest that the word
“duties” is actually calling our attention to a greater concern of gender roles. The tension of
parental duties in the novel, and elsewhere, may be arising from a shift in, as Dick would put it,
the ever-changing roles of fatherhood. In the later part of the nineteenth century, fathers were
beginning to become more involved in the domestic sphere and in the roles of educating and
raising children (Marsh, 13). In this understanding, we could look at the novel in its historical
background as possibly being one source that advocates for the change for more father
involvement at home. In particular, if we look back on the monster’s behaviors and upbringing
we could say that the novel claims that abandoned children are negatively impacted
developmentally and socially. That said, Frankenstein can be read as a cautionary tale about the
consequences of parents abandoning their children and a call for change in parental practices.
However, though Frankenstein can be seen as suggesting the consequences of parenting
in general, I must persist in saying that the novel is actually more about fathers. I say this
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especially in the light of the fact that there are no staying mother figures in the novel. In fact, the
only live mother in the novel is Victor’s mother who fatefully dies from scarlet fever when he is
seventeen and just about to be sent to Ingolstadt. Though it is clear that Victor loved his mother,
he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time grieving over her. In contrast, he says, “[m]y mother was
dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform” (Shelley, 26). Again—the topic of
duties comes up, and it seems evident that both father and son-related duties must continue
regardless of death and misfortune. The other females in the novel are all young women or
children who are not yet married or mothers, such as Elizabeth, Safie, Agatha, and Justine. That
said, I would argue that the novel should be read in the context of shedding light on failing
fathers and fatherhood in general and furthermore upon the idea that women do not solely carry
the burden of childhood, such as might be suggested under the cult of domesticity or nineteenth
century patriarchy. Keeping with this argument, fathers are just as responsible and culpable for
the actions and behaviors of their sons and daughters just as Victor should be held accountable
for that of his monster. All-in-all, I would argue that Frankenstein is a novel written in one of
the interesting points of history where the role of fatherhood is evolving and old “duties” and/or
responsibilities are being called into question along with the new. With that, I believe the novel
proposes that we all take a closer look at the consequences of failing fathers and the effects they
have on their children. If not, perhaps society as a whole really could be turned into a world of
childish monsters.
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Works Cited
Dick, Gary L. "The Changing Role Of Fatherhood: The Father As A Provider Of Selfobject
Functions." Psychoanalytic Social Work 18.2 (2011): 107-125. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=60675f39-
3796-4f7d-baea-ee15412e5895%40sessionmgr114&vid=18&hid=118
Marsh, Margaret. "Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915." JSTOR. The John
Hopkins University Press, 1988. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713066>.
Shelley, Mary W, and J P. Hunter. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, Contexts, Criticism. New York:
W.W. Norton & Co, 2012. 18-19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 36-37, 78-79, 83, 84, 95, 99,
109, 121. Print.
Thompson, Terry W. "Shelley's Frankenstein." Explicator 58.4 (2000): 191-192. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=24&sid=7f4794d4-97ef-
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Veeder, William. "The Negative Oedipus: Father, Frankenstein, And The Shelleys." Critical
Inquiry 12.2 (1986): 365-390. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=20&sid=7f4794d4-97ef-
