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Frankenstein, speaking of himself as a young man in his father’s home, points out that he is unlike Elizabeth, who would rather follow “the aerial creations of the poets”. Instead he pursues knowledge of the “world” though investigation. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the meaning of the word “world” is for Frankenstein, very much biased or limited. He thirsts for knowledge of the tangible world and if he perceives an idea to be as yet unrealised in the material world, he then attempts to work on the idea in order to give it, as it were, a worldly existence. Hence, he creates the creature that he rejects because its worldly form did not reflect the glory and magnificence of his original idea. Thrown, unaided and ignorant, into the world, the creature begins his own journey into the discovery of the strange and hidden meanings encoded in human language and society. In this essay, I will discuss how the creature can be reg!

arded as a foil to Frankenstein through an examination of the schooling, formal and informal, that both of them go through. In some ways, the creature’s gain in knowledge can be seen to parallel Frankenstein’s, s

to try to take on the role of the ultimate Creator and bring life to a corpse. Shelly shows us that the external or the society at large will always intermingle with the internal or the emotional and psychological makeup of the person. It is Frankenstein’s own “chimerical” makeup- a confidence in the male scientific ability, a belief in the male prerogative to control nature by the accumulation of knowledge, the absence of a tempering maternal influence and his own hubris, that leads him to “circumvent the natural channels of procreation”[6][7]. His knowledge of the world is ironically one that is created in piecemeal; hence the creature can be seen as a physical representation of the terrible patching up of mismatched parts to make a whole. In trying to be more than he is, that is, a human being, Frankenstein finds himself wedged in between nature and God, becoming estranged from his immediate society as he becomes burdened with the tragedies br!

As Frankenstein’s creation, the creature is also exiled from the two important categories of existence known to society- God and Man. Unlike Frankenstein, however, who tries to put himself above other men, the creature is portrayed as being caught in between Man and animal. Yet, the creature seems to obtain an understanding of human life as a complex interwoven fabric from his observation of the De Lacey family and from the books that he reads. From the “Sorrows of Werter”, the creature becomes acquainted with the tremendous range of human emotions that he found “accorded well with my experience among my protectors”(103). By reading “Plutarch’s Lives”, he learns “high thoughts” and discovers that, through the processes of his mind and the examples of great lives of other men, he is able to be “elevated…above the wretched sphere” (104) of his own reflections. He also reads Paradise Lost in which id!

Not simply a stock symbol for a part of Frankenstein’s psyche, the creature also portrays a natural and innocent man who becomes the victim of his social conditions because he reacts to the adversity he faces with negative emotions. After being convinced of the De Lacey’s high level of nobility of character, the creature attempts to introduce himself into their lives with disastrous results. In their rejection, the creature witnesses and experiences the contradictions in human behaviour when Felix attacks him without asking him his story and Safie runs from the cottage without stopping to assist Agatha who has fainted. The creature, however, is not simply a victim of his socio-political circumstances. He also chooses to react in hatred and bitterness to his surroundings and to allow the full play of his feelings for revenge(113).

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Frankenstein speaks fondly of his youth because his parents were “indulgent” and his companions were “amiable” (21). His parents’ policy in the education of their children is that there should neither be punishment nor “the voice of command” (26). Instead, they encoura

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