How does Shelley present the themes of good and evil in

Frankenstein? Refer closely to the novel in your answer comparing

where useful with Jekyll and Hyde.

When traditionally reading a novel, readers often wish to place labels of either good or evil
on characters so they can determine who the heroes and villains are and by extension know
who they should be rooting for. Using the novel Frankenstein, Shelley shows us that the
distinction between these two supposed opposites can be very difficult to distinguish as she
feels both sets of traits are present in every human being. Shelley believed good and evil are
co-existent and that we are not born with these traits inherent within us, but instead these are
formed based on our upbringing and experiences within our life. During her adolescence,
Shelley was greatly influenced by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his ethos is a
driving force within the novel. Rousseau believed that if a man is left abandoned to himself,
he would become the most disfigured of all. Lawrence Lipking writes that good and evil
encompass all, they are both part of nature and there is no escaping either of them. A similar
mind-set would clearly have been instilled in Shelley due to Rousseaus influence and this
may be the reason why Shelley writes about characters that have a duality of good and evil
within them, most clearly presented in Victor and his creation.

As well as the novel being written to display the duality of man, it is also a social
commentary on advancements being made in the scientific field. The novel can very clearly
be seen as a warning to scientists at the time as it displays the possible cataclysmic effect of
delving too deep into areas of science. The idea of animating a conglomeration of body parts
through scientific methods performed in the novel by Victor was no doubt influenced by the
famous scientific experiment conducted by Luigi Galvini whereby he animated frogs legs
using electrical impulses. By creating a character born of this method that goes on to be
rejected by society and commit murders Shelley is showing how seemingly harmless
experiments can descend into much worse. Stuart Curran discusses advancements in
electrochemistry at the time and says, It represented the cutting edge of the material
sciences, at once promising and threatening in an intense and equal measure. This fits in
with the idea of science having the ability to be good through the promising rewards to be
gained but also evil due to the threatening nature of it. Scientific ambition can be seen as
good and evil within the novel. At first Victors ambitions seem good as he says, I thought
that I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time renew life
where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption but over time we realise his real
(although perhaps subconscious) reason for creating the creature is for the fame that would
follow. This is shown when Victor states, I was surprised that among so many men of
genius who had directed their enquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be
reserved to discover such an astonishing secret. Although Victor may have believed he was
attempting to do good, his inability to see his own faults and his high scientific ambition led
to a creation that ultimately is an extension of all that is evil within him. His hubris-like
determination to create life from dead body parts leads to a lack of correspondence with his
family which can be seen as particularly negative considering their grieving state as his
mother had died only weeks before. The evil side of scientific ambition can also be seen in
Jekyll and Hyde when Jekyll says "I never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will;
unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies.
Although Dr Jekylls ambition is to break previous scientific limitations for the greater good
of man, we can see this divides opinions and can lead to accusations of heresy.

Setting is used by both Shelley and Stevenson to convey the themes of good and evil and at
times a battle between the two. The powerful influence of surroundings for the good on
Victor is displayed when it says It was a divine spring; and the season contributed greatly to
my convalescence. The idea of being with nature seems both appealing and fulfilling and
this could be used as a stark contrast to the supposed unnatural things Victor does within the
confinement of his laboratory. The uplifting and remedial effect is again shown when Victor
states By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me. The positive stance Shelley has
towards nature is mostly likely a reflection of her childhood which was largely spent writing
about nature but may also be indicative of the social fears at the time that industrialism was
occurring too rapidly, perhaps at the expense of previous natural beauty. Shelley also uses
setting to help the readers formulate an opinion on the supposedly heinous deed that Victor is
about to carry out. Preceding the creation, the mood is already set by Shelley as she describes
the event as taking place on a dreary night of November, a month not commonly associated
with life and joy but instead with cold weather and a lack of light. Victor states that his
candle was nearly burnt out just before life is instilled in the body and this is reflective of
his morality being at a minimal, allowing him to carry out an unnatural process. Setting is
also very important within Jekyll and Hyde. Irving Saposnik states that choosing London as
the location for the novel is quintessential as London typified the Victorian era and was a
macrocosm of the necessary fragmentation that Victorian man found inescapable
(Saposnik). Rev. Tuckniss consolidates this view when he describes Victorian London as a
metaphor for "the great arena of [moral] conflict. Stevenson uses pathetic fallacy to
describe the internal battle within Dr Jekyll as when Utterson and the servant walk to the
Jekyll residence the weather is described as wild, coldwith a pale moon, lying on her back
as though the wind had tilted her. Stevenson uses the weather to display the difficulties that
face Victorian gentlemen when they attempt to calculate how they should behave based on
societal pressures and inner urges.

Alter-egos and doppelgangers are used both within Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde to help
display the duality of man and the good and evil within people. Gavrier Reisner believes the
creature is made of [Victors] unconscious energy which would allude to the creature being
a physical externalisation of Victors inner and supressed emotions. Victors very structured
upbringing did not allow him to be expressive which in turn morphed him into almost an
empty shell that is representative of both societal pressures and his familys expectations on a
young man at that time. This is very similar to Jekyll and Hyde as the key issue within that
book is the large pessure placed upon Victorian men to be the gentlemen society wishes them
to be rather than the humans they truly are. This is very much a battle between good and evil
within them, however it is questionable what is representative of good. As Saposnik says
Henry Jekyll is a complex example of his age of anxiety: woefully weighed down by self-
deception, cruelly a slave to his own weakness, sadly a disciple of a severe discipline, his is a
cry of Victorian man from the depths of his self-imposed under-ground. Although the
creature can very much be seen as an evil mirror of Victor, Shelley makes it very clear he is
not born evil but instead is formed that way by society. As Shelleys husband Percy writes,
In this the direct moral of the book consistsTreat a person ill, and he will become
wicked. The creature himself accounts for his evilness by saying Am I not shunned and
hated by all mankind?...if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear. The creature starts his life
with benevolent actions such as collecting firewood for the DeLacey family and its only
after continual cruelty from society that he descends into an evil character. Linguistically, I
feel Mary Shelley does not give the monster a name as she attempts to suppress his presence
like humans attempt to suppress their inner evil. Shelley uses a Chinese Box narrative
structure with Walton being the outermost narrative, encasing Victors narrative with the
monsters narrative right at the heart of the story. The innermost narrative enriches what we
learn and again the monster is at the very heart comparative with the part-evil within us all.
Waltons narrative is a frame narrative which like a picture frame does not detract from the
story but instead enhances it. The narrative progresses from each character to perhaps show a
decline into evil starting with Walton and ending with the monster.
To conclude I believe Shelley presents the themes of good and evil in such a way to perhaps
suggest they are not as opposed as one would expect. Lawrence Lipkin conveys this idea well
when he says nature can be the source of death as well as life. Good people do evil Shelley
teaches us that an expression of both sides of a persons character is necessary as an attempt
to repress the dark side of us is futile as one way or another in will manifest itself shown by
Victors creation. This view is further supported by Stevenson as within his novel he shows
Dr Jekyll attempting to contain his evil side but instead it overcomes him and results in his
death. Through his novel Stevenson attempts to evoke sympathy for the men in the Victorian
era by displaying how difficult it is to balance the need to feel satisfaction yet retain societal
respect. As Robert Louis Stevenson said All humans are commingled out of good and evil.

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Bibliography

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994)

Stevenson, Robert Louis Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Penguin Popular Classics, 2002)

Curran, Stuart The Scientific Grounding of Frankenstein - (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2001), pp. 283-
92
Tuckniss, William - Reverend Tuckniss introduction to the fourth volume of Mayhew's
London Labour and the London Poor (Dover reprint, New York, 1968)

Lipking, Lawrence Frankenstein, The True Story (W.W. Norton, 1996)

Reisner, Gavriel The Death-Ego and the Vitaal Self: Romances of Desire in Literature and
Psychoanalysis Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003

Saposnik, Irving - The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rice University 1971)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe On Frankenstein (1817)