Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

1. VAMPIRISM IN FRANKENSTEIN

2. John Polidori’s published his short story ‘The
Vampyre’ in 1819.
 It introduced a new breed of villain; a
supernatural creature that feeds of the blood and
emotional vulnerability of its human prey
In Frankenstein, the novel, which predates the earliest
popular vampire fiction, the Creature shares striking
similarities as a villain, possessing instead a metaphorical
vampirism that feeds on emotional distress

3. Vampires both attract and repel their victims, instilling both desire
and disgust, making them intriguing and difficult to define. Most
importantly, the vampire preys on their victims both physically and
mentally, feeding off their victim’s frailties, sexual psychosis and the
blood within their veins in order to bring about the entire
destruction of the self.
The vampire’s success as a literary villain also lies in its deceptive
nature, that it appears as human whilst concealing their primal,
parasitic urges.

4. How is the creature in Frankenstein a vampire?
Revived from the dead. In an unnatural state Life-in-death.
Has an isolated status in society, like vampires it is feared by
people and rejected by people. It does not belong neither with
the living nor with the dead. He’s an outcast.
Looks like humans but in a perverted monstrous way
Causes death and brings destruction. He is bloodthirsty in the
way vampires from folklore are.
Preys on his closest family, Victor his creator.
Sucks the emotional energy of its creator, enervates him by
sucking his vitality and life energy.

5. In Frankenstein, the Creature is not a vampire in the
traditional sense. However, there are several comparisons
that can be drawn between these two supernatural
creatures, and the Creature’s journey frequently parallels
that of the vampire in terms of its role as a villain.
It undergoes the transformation from rejected child to
emotional parasite, feeding on the vulnerability of Victor
Frankenstein, his creator, ‘in a furious and fruitless attempt
to make someone fill the emotional or spiritual vacuum in
his […] being, resulting in mutual bondage.’

6. This argument is enhanced by Frankenstein’s own weary
acknowledgement of his creation’s nature: ‘I considered the being
whom I had cast among mankind […] nearly in the light of my own
vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to
destroy all that was dear to me.’
 This Creature is a vampire for Frankenstein alone, a villain forced
into his role by circumstances beyond his control.
The Creature’s vampiric nature actually develops during its
creation. Frankenstein describes an array of strong conflicting
emotions when undergoing the process.

7. The doctor pours his entire self into the process, sacrificing his health
and well being ‘for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate
object.’ (Frankenstein, p.58) Frankenstein, then, gives his own life
force unto the creature before it has even been brought into
consciousness, indicating that he would gladly sacrifice his own
youth and vitality to give the creature life.
It becomes a striking reversal of the vampire’s status as a predator;
when the vampire feeds, its youth and beauty is restored, and
Frankenstein’s obsessive behavior appears to instill that vampirism
into his creation, consigning the Creature to a life of villainy.

8. The creature is ugly and its hideousness will come to be an
externalization of the Creature’s evil as he feeds on the distress and
horror of his creator.
The creature wears his villainy upon his face, utilising that ugliness ‘to
pursue Victor physically and psychologically, and threatens to
“consume” him and the entire symbolic order in which he is
implicated.’
Indeed, before the creature even comes to be, Frankenstein displays a
disturbing complicity and inclination to victimisation that suggests his
life will always nourish the Creature’s, whether he is willing or not.

9. Like the relationship between predator and victim in ‘Carmilla’, the
relationship between Frankenstein and the Creature is highly
dependent. As it transpires, one cannot live without the other,
enhancing the posited theory of emotional vampirism.
 After the Creature is born, Victor falls ill and suffers from delusions;
‘the form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was
forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him.’
(Frankenstein, p.63)
Like the vampire’s visitations in dreams, the Creature haunts and
troubles Victor’s psyche, which seems to imply that the Creature is
the cause of Victor’s sickness; that the life Victor gave to the Creature
was in part his own. This is not an isolated incident in the novel. The
Creature comes to rely on Victor’s misery by murdering those close to
him, and with every death Victor experiences a violent reaction that
drains him of his health.

10. After the murder of his brother and the accusation of his maid
Justine, Victor describes how ‘I gnashed my teeth and ground them
together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul.’
(Frankenstein, p.89) Following the murder of his close friend Clerval
he falls prey to a violent fever, in which he is again haunted by
visions of the Creature ‘grasping my neck.’ (Frankenstein, p.181)
With every murder enacted by the Creature, Victor descends into
emotional relapse, and from that relapse the Creature appears to
grow stronger. The Creature has no desire to kill Victor, but to drain
him of his very essence, feeding upon his misery out of revenge,
killing the ones he loves most like the folkloric vampires who prays
on his closest family.

11. He is bound to remain on the edges of society, like vampires from
legends he lives in isolation because he does not belong to
humankind, he is neither living nor dead.
 He is restricted by his otherness, but feels a strong desire to
experience love and passion, a desire constantly denied to him
because of his un-naturalness. From this desire and denial stems an
intense hatred, and that hatred inspires a campaign of emotional
cruelty that will eventually drive Frankenstein and those around
them to their graves. The theme underlying all the Creature’s
demands is his right to life, but, like the vampire, he is not truly
living, therefore that demand is futile. The Creature is driven by his
own emotional emptiness, and seeks gratification through the
suffering of the man who wronged him.

12. The Creature’s vampiric nature capitalises on the fear of scientific
progress that dominated society at the time of the novel’s
publication; Frankenstein’s spiritual destruction represents the
concept that unnatural creation leads to unnatural existence, for
the creation and creator both.
FOR DISCUSSION:
The question of ethics in medicine and all sciences.
Is the monster a victim or victimizer?
Can the monster be considered a Romantic figure?

13. A Romantic Hero
 Someone on the margins of society, ordinary people like beggars,
tramps, prositutes …
 An outcast, an isolated figure
 Driven by emotions and passion
 Enthusiasm about the grandeur of the natural world- sublimity of nature
 The monster’s experience of coming into the world without any
knowledge and learning by instinct and intuition
 The Romantic movement was based largely on the work of Swiss writer
Rousseau, who outlined his theories in the book The Social Contract.
Rousseau, and the Romantics, believed that society placed restrictions on
man, corrupting him from his nobler, simpler ways of savagery.