Traumatic Responsibility
Traumatic Responsibility
Victor Frankenstein as Creator and Casualty
A rich theme running through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is responsibility. The novel explores the responsibility that Victor Frankenstein has for the destruction caused by his scientific curiosity, as well as the responsibility that he owes to his creation. Victor Frankenstein’s creature has emotions, desires and dreams that cannot be satisfied by humans. So the creature comes to Victor, first pleading—and then demanding—that he create a female companion with whom he can experience peace and love. While Victor grapples intellectually and practically with the implications of being responsible both for and to the creature, he also experiences responsibility as a devastating physical and emotional state. In this way, Mary Shelley raises a third kind of responsibility—to the self.
Keywords: Moral responsibility, Legal responsibility, Social responsibility, Consequences, Obligations
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.