Frankenstein: Bad Parenting

Nurturing care from parents is critical for a child's development. If a child is subjected to neglect or abuse at a young age, they will most likely have a different view of the world than children who benefited from loving parents. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a perfect example of bad parenting. The creature lacks a parental figure from the beginning. Frankenstein, in fear and disgust of what he created, abandons the creature; leaving him to fend for himself. "Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room" (pg. 71), spoken by Dr. Frankenstein himself when he flees his creation, who could be considered like a newborn, although in a larger-than-life body. The creature finds Frankenstein in his room sleeping. He grins, as children do when recognizing their parent, and reaches out to the Doctor. Frankenstein awakens and is terrified, thinking the creature wants to hurt him, and again hastens away. Alone and confused, the creature wanders off.

The creature's abandonment reminds me of a little Ugandan girl named Mirembe. Her parents had deserted her because she is stricken with sickle-cell anemia. Alone in a dirty shack, Mirembe was much like the creature in the woods. Luckily, being an adorable child, Mirembe was rescued and adopted; the creature, a conglomeration of different corpses, was no where near that fortunate. He was forced to teach himself how to eat and keep warm, how to talk and read, things we all take for granted because our parents provide it for us.

Eventually the creature comes into contact with Frankenstein again and practically begs for a scrap of happiness, that is, a female creation like himself that he can love. Frankenstein almost yields, saying "His tale and the feeling he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations, and did I not as his master owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?" (pg. 178) Frankenstein recognizes that he has a responsibility to make the creature happy, but does not because he firmly believes the creature to be forever a horrific being.

Abandoned, betrayed, and attacked time and time again, the monster turns into a bitter murderer, displaying how bad parenting can deeply affect someone's life. Marge Piercy states in A Work of Artifice that, "With living creatures one must being very early". No matter how grotesque the creature is he is still a living thing, and in the beginning he had no one to take care of him, turning him into the infamous Frankenstein's monster.