As mentioned in the previous piece, Shelley’s Frankenstein is a tale of empathy - but not purely of empathy toward the creator. Rather, her story is as much an exploration of the suffering of a parent who brings an “unnatural” child into this world as it is of the trauma experienced by the child who has been cast aside as a result. In losing her own child, Shelley fictionalizes the impact it had upon herself and the soul of her daughter.
As the second sketch in my 3-part series, I have drawn the image of Frankenstein’s monster, capturing his “wretched” and unnatural form in full light. As discussed in the previous piece, Shelley’s own trauma from the loss of her child heavily influences her depiction of Victor’s fear of having violated the natural laws of requiring a woman to give birth to a child. While Victor may remind Shelley of her own guilt or pain at having given birth to a child fated to die within only a few days, Frankenstein’s monster is the manifestation of that child. The monster never had a place in this world, and he is a manifestation of all the negative feelings that are harbored toward him by society and by his own parent. He alone bears the responsibility for his creation of which he bore no will upon. Thus, he seeks to shield himself from the world in darkness and in the crevices of nature where no human will go; it is only in light (which I have deliberately shone onto the sketch) that we can observe the trauma and suffering that the monster experiences because of his creator’s wishes to remove him from this world. I have drawn him to be exhausted, teary, and unlike any living human. He is negative energy and “unfit to exist.”
As mentioned in the previous piece, Shelley’s Frankenstein is a tale of empathy - but not purely of empathy toward the creator. Rather, her story is as much an exploration of the suffering of a parent who brings an “unnatural” child into this world as it is of the trauma experienced by the child who has been cast aside as a result. In losing her own child, Shelley fictionalizes the impact it had upon herself and the soul of her daughter.
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