Capstone Research Draft

The failure of Mentors
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a dark novel about a happy man’s unforgivable mistake and the consequences that led him into a broken, miserable life. Had his male mentors paid more attention to Frankenstein’s wayward path, they might have been able to prevent his catastrophic creation. The creature is more than ignored by the man who created him, he is shunned and cursed. Victor obviously should have been a father and a teacher to his creation but he abandoned the Creature. This left the Creature to learn the ways of a cruel world on his own and it made him a monster. Frankenstein and his creature were both let down by their teachers and it led the both of them to a miserable life with an early end.
Victor Frankenstein’s childhood studies fed his ravenous scientific mind with out of date works by ancient alchemists. He started reading Cornelius Agrippa at a young age and when his father say it, he said: “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash” (Shelley 24). Looking back on this incident, Victor says to his audience:
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 chemical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should have certainly thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that lead to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. (Shelley 24)
Victor chooses to use the words “taken the pains” to describe his father’s negligence; this phrase suggests that Alphonse Frankenstein did not explain to Victor the error of his studies out of laziness. As a child, Victor mistook his father’s mild sloth as a lack of knowledge in the area of his studies and ignored the advice. Dismissing the comment and assuming his father’s opinion was born in ignorance may have been justified seeing as Victor was only a child and his father was not a man of science. Victor continued his self directed studies and he was led to more old-fashioned alchemists like Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus.
Alphonse’s second mistake was to send Victor to the University of Ingolstadt. This is where Victor had the resources to learn how to create his monster and the equipment to make it possible. The first professor Victor spoke with was M. Krempe. This man had the same opinion as Alphonse considering “Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of [Victor’s] imagination” (Shelley 26). M. Krempe was very harsh with Victor’s study choice:
Every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies in which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.”
Krempe’s opinion was the same as Alphonse’s but this time, Victor could not dismiss it as born from ignorance since M. Krempe was a well read man of science. Victor dismissed Krempe’s advice because of Krempe’s “repulsive countenance” (Shelley 31). Because Krempe was “conceited“ (Shelley 32), Victor hardly attended his lectures and because Krempe valued the work of modern chemists so much, Victor grew a disdain for them. He was “required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth” (Shelley 32).
The encounter with M. Waldman removed Victor’s prejudice against modern chemists. M. Waldman was the fist of Victor’s mentors to tell him that the time he spent with outdated alchemists was not wasted and shared his view with the young Frankenstein:
“The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seemed only to dabble in dirt and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows”
These well meant words of encouragement were the most harmful. Waldman’s view pushed Frankenstein to his creation. It was because of Waldman’s ideas that Victor began attending lectures on natural history and chemistry. Waldman was the one who showed Victor the equipment used in a chemistry lab. Under M. Waldman’s instruction Victor’s unhealthy ambition was fed and fostered by knowledge. This encouraging environment coupled with a lasting fountain of information pushed Victor to his goal which would eventually wreck his life.
Victor had mentors in his life who meant well but failed him. Victor’s creature had no one. The Creature is often compared with Adam, the first human. One of the main differences between him and Adam however, is the environment. Adam was brought into the Garden of Eden, a perfect world, with God, the perfect mentor. The Creature was brought into a cold, dark, rainy, fallen world, abandoned by his sinful creator. The result is the Creature becomes a monster, a reflection of his surroundings (Nardo 47). This result supports the common enlightenment ideal of Tabula Rasa (Latin for “blank slate”). The idea of Tabula Rasa states that a child as no natural instinct. Everything that a child will grow into is a result of his/her surroundings during infancy and childhood (Dussinger 69). Because he had no guiding mentor, the creature became hostile to humanity.
Recently there have been studies concerning the absence of a father figure in a child’s life. When the child is brought up with a father, he/she will learn how to speak much faster (Park 166). “It was necessary for [Shelley’s] plot that the Monster should learn to speak and read; but it was necessary much more fundamentally for her purpose that he should do so without a teacher” (Nardo 49). As a lonely, cursed creature, the Monster still gained independence and knowledge.
The only people who taught the Creature anything did so unintentionally. These people were the cottagers. “[The Creature] is like a lonely child creating an ideal fantasy-family for himself” (Nardo 50). These unaware tutors taught the Creature love and joy but took away his hope for these feelings when they rejected him. Ultimately, it was the fault of Victor Frankenstein for his utter abandonment of his creation. Had he mentored the creature as a father should, the swathe of destruction could have been prevented.
The only perfect mentor on our planet would be God, the rest of us are fallen and cannot expect to make our students or sons perfect human beings. Adam was the only human with the perfect mentor. During the enlightenment, some new scientific ideas concerning God were brought forward. Sir Isaac Newton said “God is above all quantitive measurements; indeed he effects those coordinates which make all measurements possible” (Dussinger 41). God gives us all the means to scientific advancements. In Frankenstein God is not thought of as a source of scientific knowledge, “in Frankenstein’s fantasy the mysteries of the created world inhere in the mother as manifest nature, while the laws of reason are attributed to the father” (Dussinger 42). The replacement of God the father with Reason the father was a perversion of the common Christian faith and Frankenstein paid for it dearly.





Word Count: 1498 Works Cited
Nardo, Don. Readings on Frankenstein. San Diego CA : Greenhaven Press, 2000.

Park, Ross D. Fatherhood. Cambridge, MS. : Harvard University Press, 1996

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York, NY. : Signet Classics, 1818.

Dussinger, John A. "KINSHIP AND GUILT IN MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKESTEIN." Studies in the Novel 8.1 (Spring76 1976): 38. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Trinity Western University Norma Alloway Library, Langley, B.C. 7 Mar. 2009 .

McLane, Maureen Noelle. "Literate species: Populations, `humanities,' and Frankenstein." ELH 63.4 (Winter96 1996): 959. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Trinity Western University Norma Alloway Library, Langley, B.C. 7 Mar. 2009 .