Frankenstein as Modern Narcissus

                                

 Name: Joshi Deepti M

  

 Paper: Romantic Literature

  

 Topic: Frankenstein as Modern Narcissus

 Submitted to:Department of English, M.K University,

               Bhavanagar

                 Frankenstein as Modern Narcissus

            Frankenstein has been published anonymously in 1818 and is full of both analogies drawn between the characters and other figures from literature and myth. Mary Shelly has subtitled Frankenstein “The Modern Prometheus “but she could have also referred it as “The Modern Narcissus” because Victor Frankenstein has characteristic personality of Narcissus.

Frankenstein is like Ovid’s  myth of Echo and Narcissus, a tragic story of Echo and Narcissus. Here Shelly has mistakenly compared the ancient myth and modern myth and I think no novel has yet illustrated more graphically the distractive consequence of withheld love.

In the novel protagonist Victor Frankenstein also spurns an individual who asks for love. The way Narcissus has rejected Echo and her love and she remained helpless, in same way creature or monster also made efforts to get attention and love from his creator or father who has given him life.

Though Victor has created Monster by using organs of different dead bodies and gives life to the person who is much height ed in compare to other and who has ugly look, is like new born baby. And he wants his father’s love and attention but for Victor Monster is not his child but just a Monster and that is why Victor left him alone. Now for Monster it’s difficult to live without Victor and also to live with Victor .Here Ovid’s myth and Shell’s novel both are revealing a pathological union of two individuals for whom their own life and wishes are more important rather than other’s  life and emotions.

In the novel Victor Frankenstein is the first character who occupies our attention, a character for whom his desire to create life is everything while to accept that life is not important. For him Monster is not his child and responsibility now. In below given quote we can see his hunger for knowledge and to create a life through that knowledge:

“The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were earliest sensation I can remember”

Victor’s decision to create new life also seems related to his efforts to become master of death. He wants to become God and want to show to the death that it will be not so longer dread full and fearful for human being. It is also shows that he wants to be superior to God. So how for Narcissus he himself is superior and rejects even Echo’s love, Victor also loves only him and to control over death he creates life.

Victor also demonstrates the all or nothing behavior common to Narcissus. And his brief infatuation with science is a good example and when his father denies him to take interest in volume of “Cornelius Agrippa” Victor rebels against his father’s harsh judgment but internalizes his dismissive attitude.

Even Victor’s reliance upon defensive idealization represents one the major narcissistic feature of his. He repeatedly makes one statement about his childhood that-

“No human being could have childhood passed a happier than me”

So here one major problem is that if his childhood is ideal and adulthood means present is quite good than how could a loving son enjoy an uncomplicated relationship with his parents and how could he become a monstrous father? What were the reasons behind it?

Reason for his becoming monstrous father we find in his childhood. When Victor was of seventeen at that time once Elizabeth was suffering from scarlet fever and Mrs.Frankenstein (her mother) nurses Elizabeth to back to health, even by sacrificing her own life progress. But when she heard that Elizabeth’s life was menaced, she could not control her anxiety, on the other hand Victor also could not control over his anxiety that her mother is taking care of Elizabeth and loves her more than him. Thus we can detect Victor’s anger over his mother, which destroyed the family further. And after his mother’s death, Elizabeth was saved by her, and his anger spills over to Elizabeth; who indirectly responsible for Victor’s mother’s death.More than that after his mother’s death he can not express his anger as his mother’s last wish revealed an uncontrolled mother, narcissistic -ally invested in her children’s lives.

Even the birth of William (his younger brother) is also reason for his insecurity, because his younger brother has taken his position into family. And William’s death, consequently, unmasks Victor’s murderous feeling, his revenge on a family. Here the surprising fact is William is not the real object the Victor’s rage but only a symbol of disappointment is the reason of it.

Unlike Victor, the creature or Monster also has no friend who cares for him have no loving family to pay attention to him. And Monster’s story thus reveals the futile search for loving friend and parents, and he also experiences the worst Narcissistic injury.

But the actual moment of the creature’s self-alienation occurred when he gazed down at transparent pool of water and like Narcissus he also paralyzed by his reflection in water and he just says that- 

“At first stared back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror, and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality Monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensation of despondence and mortification”

If we now compare both characters that is more Narcissistic than we come to decision that Victor is more Narcissistic than Monster. Victor always seeks to thwart our identification with the creature while the creature always confesses his crime. Indeed Victor’s Narcissism is clearer at the end of the story, when he is presumably patient, than in the beginning. At the end of the story when he sees Robert Walton as younger version of himself, he exhorts the captain and his crew to undertake a “glorious expedition” to slay the hated creature. Here once again he don’t care about Walton’s life and he says to Walton that-

                                                                                                       

“You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your name adored, as belonging to brave man who encountered death for humor and the benefit of mankind”

Here ironically he calls Walton and his crew the ‘Benefactors of your species”. Here Victor finds the right audience because like Victor Walton also has a strained relationship with his father and like victor Walton also has a hunger for a knowledge and friend.

To conclude my point I want to add that in the novel we find three Narcissus but we find all qualities of Narcissus in Victor and at second place in Monster and at lat we also find not more beat in Walton. And Victor is not Narcissus by birth but her Mother’s behavior, and his failure somewhere is the reasons that made him to behave like Narcissist. And he has somewhere done the same with Monster that done with him by his parents.