The Monstrous Quality of Isolation

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as described by Christa Knellwolf in her “Geographic Boundaries and Inner Space: Frankenstein, Scientific Exploration, and the Quest for the Absolute,” tells the story of the consequences of pursuing a quest of mastery without an adequate understanding of human nature. Encouraged to penetrate into Nature’s “hiding places” as a means of discovery, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster formed by mismatched parts stolen from graveyards (Knellwolf 512). The monster’s and Victor’s family’s eventual demise, according to Knellwolf, is the result of Frankenstein’s disregard for mankind as he seeks to create life from death. However, while Knellwolf correctly identifies the need for understanding one’s own world to bring about successful discovery, she fails to explain how to do so. To end the analysis here would be to pinpoint one of humanity’s ills and make no attempt to solve it; perceptive readers must dig deeper. Frankenstein and Walton must fulfill their discoveries with sympathy and care, as Knellwolf advocates for, but they must do so by maintaining a connection to the outside world; companionship is the lifeblood of discovery. As Frankenstein becomes increasingly isolated in his work to form the creature, he becomes something more (or less) than human; his failure to form companionship with anyone about the work he is doing results in an utter lack of foresight of the disaster he is causing. Contrarily, while Walton begins his journey in a similar fashion to Victor, intent on finding the absolute nature has to offer, it is his ability to find companions to talk to about his desires that prevents far-reaching catastrophe.

Victor Frankenstein’s abject failure in sustaining his “absolute” discovery of nature does not merely stem from a lack of “nurturing context,” as Knellwolf asserts; it comes from absolute isolation, a forceful independence that verges on divinity (Knellwolf 511). Knellwolf suggests that “the first cause of all misfortunes is not unreasonable curiosity but insufficient knowledge about the qualities and needs of human life” (512). While this is a compelling argument, Knellwolf falls short in providing both what knowledge is needed about human life and how to attain it. The answer to both lies in companionship, or in Victor’s case, the lack thereof. As Frankenstein feverishly works to form his creature, he withdraws completely from society. Instead of “watch[ing] the blossom or the expanding leaves,” Frankenstein locks himself in his lab, certain his desires will come to fruition (Shelley 44). He turns inward and not to other people, believing only he can achieve what he has sought after. From the task he chooses to carry out—creating life from death—to the isolation he shrouds himself in, Victor likens himself to a god. As he begins his quest to create the creature, he exclaims, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (42). But when Victor sees what he has created, when he watches the “dull yellow eye of the creature open,” he runs away in horror, leaving both him and the monster in isolation (45). Victor’s “beloved friend” Henry Clerval comes to check in on him shortly after Victor sees his creation: “I dreaded to behold this monster; but I feared still more that Henry should see him” (150, 48). One could argue that at this time, Clerval is Victor’s closest companion. But there is a difference between having a companion and valuing a companion; in raising himself above the humans that care for him, Victor denies Henry the honesty and friendship that might have saved him. Believing only he can do it, Victor resolves to find and stop the creature without assistance. As the creature attempts to reconcile his existence, he finds that he has no one. Both are alone; neither has figured out how to proceed.

As both Victor and the monster retreat further into themselves, they increasingly resort to desperate measures of violence and escape. The monster has just one request for Victor after his disheartening encounter with the DeLacey family: “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (136). More than anything, the monster wants a companion—someone to love and understand him for exactly who he is. This does not guarantee happiness for the monster, but it will lessen his misery. However, Victor, whether he believed he was acting nobly or towards his own selfish desires, denies the monster a female counterpart. As he rips the monster’s dreams apart, Victor exclaims, “I tore to pieces the thing on which [he] was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness” (161). The complete destruction of potential is a physical representation of life without companionship; it is hell. Seething, devastated beyond imagination, the monster promises Victor, “... if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear” (136). And so he does. The monster picks off nearly all of Victor’s close friends and family until the only one left is Victor himself. When the creature kills Elizabeth as his last act of vengeance, he tells Walton, “I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen” (Shelley 213). Not anchored to anything but his own thoughts, the monster believes the only sufficient course of action is to change himself to reflect the world he sees around him. Victor does the same, creating a distorted mirror of him and the creature. Victor believed he knew far more than he did, trying and failing to transcend the borders of humanity alone. Just before Victor’s death, he sees the “forms of the beloved flit before [him]” (211). Perhaps Victor has visions of Henry, but they are empty and filled with shadows- just like his dream to form and sustain his creature. When both Victor’s fate and the creature’s presumed fate end in death, Shelley’s clear conclusion emerges: isolation is monstrous.

While Robert Walton has grandiose visions of greatness just as Frankenstein does, his ability to find companionship stops him from teetering off the edge of catastrophe. Walton has embarked on a voyage to find the North Pole, telling his sister that he “preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in [his] path” (9). Just like Frankenstein, he dreams of going where no man has gone before. He has ship and no inkling of what is to come, but Walton is perfectly willing to risk his life in pursuit of the intangible. Walton’s impossible ambition propels him to heights higher than humans can reach— “... he embarks on a mission of transcending the limits of his ordinary humanity” (Knellwolf 508). However, while Frankenstein believes only he can discover the secrets of the universe, Walton has no qualms about listening to and asking others. When he stumbles upon a haggard Frankenstein in the arctic, he exclaims, ““My thoughts, and every feeling of my soul, have been drunk up by the interest for my guest” (Shelley 203). Walton soaks every bit of information he can glean from Frankenstein and internalizes what he says. When Walton asks about the method with which Frankenstein formed his monster, Frankenstein grows agitated, saying, “‘‘Are you mad, my friend... or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? … to what do your questions tend? Peace, peace! learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own’” (203). Whether he realizes it or not, Walton listened to Frankenstein, and this companionship may have saved his life. Walton makes the executive decision with his crew to return home, contrary to all of his previous claims. He descends back to humanity, enough to recognize others. Knellwolf claims that Walton’s own willingness to “endure among the horrors of freezing to death shows that he does not simply aspire to the laurel wreath of a successful explorer, but aims at nothing less than the absolute,” but the opposite is true (Knellwolf 508). He did once aim at the absolute, yes, but it was companionship that brought Walton down do Earth. Walton is the only one in the novel to have a civil conversation with the monster— “I called on him to stay” (Shelley 212). There appears to be little difference between Walton and Frankenstein, at least at first; both are ardent explorers intent on mastery. But there is one life-saving difference: in the midst of his curiosity, Walton valued his companion.

Christa Knellwolf was not wrong when she asserted that there are consequences when curiosity is not embedded with an intimate understanding of the world, or that Frankenstein was not able to successfully fulfill his discovery because he failed to explore creation with sympathy and care. But she did not go far enough. Beyond mentioning the destruction Victor causes, she skips over exactly what the repercussions of Frankenstein are or how to remedy them. The true consequence of Frankenstein failing to look anywhere but himself on his mission to create life is becoming something inhuman; the reason Walton was able to stray from this path is because he found and valued a friend. She describes Frankenstein, the monster, and Walton as “being driven by an insatiable yearning to discover themselves” (Knellwolf 511). With the exception of Walton, these protagonists were isolated and thus were only able to find the most monstrous parts of themselves. This was the element Knellwolf was missing: the only way one can make a successful discovery, whether internal or external, is through companionship.