Who Is The Real Monster?
Who is Mary Shelley and what inspired her to write Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley was an English novelist and short story writer and is best known for her novel Frankenstein. Also her parents were a major influence, as they were both famous writers and philosophers.
Mary Shelley was inspired, by the scientific and political revolutions that were taking place at the time. When the novel was written, in June 1816, she was staying in Geneva, Switzerland with the famous lord Byron. Here she was then challenged to write a gothic horror genre book.
During her at Geneva, with a professor and her husband, one night they had a ghost story
competition following this she started getting a terrifying dream. She was then encouraged by
her husband to write down the tale, Mary believed it would a small collection of short stories, but it turned into a novel.
Many people also think the loss of her mother and the three losses of her children led her to
write such a horrifying tale. Additionally a new scientific development during the time of
Mary Shelley was Bio-electrics. That is to say frog’s legs would jump when given a shock.
From this the concept of reanimating dead tissue was popularise. Also many people believe that; Dr. Frankenstein was based on a very real German "mad scientist" who allegedly attempted to electronically conjoin and revive dead body parts.
The Monster’s Tale
Monster derives from the Latin word monstrum, which derived from the verb moneo which means "to remind, warn, instruct, or foretell", and denotes anything strange, unnatural, hideous person, animal, or thing," or any "monstrous or unusual thing, circumstance, or adventure. In simple words a monster is a hideously grotesque animal or human being, or a hybrid of both, whose appearance frightens and whose powers of destruction threaten the human world's social or moral order.
If we go by the above definition of a monster, then in deed Frankenstein are monsters. Here I have use ‘are’ pronoun, because I believe that by creating Frankenstein creature Victor
Frankenstein has equal power of threatening the human world’s social and moral order.
Here Victor does succeed at creating a living being, but fails at creating a human being.
To Create Life
Feral children are human children who have lived away from human contact from a very young age, and have little or no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. Feral children are confined by humans (often parents), brought up by animals, or live in the wild in isolation.
In the 1800s, a debate raged between scientists whether feral children were simply “idiots” who had no capacity to learn language or socially appropriate behaviour. This was widely believed, but some scientists saw feral children as evidence for the idea that some facets of human knowledge are learned and constructed rather than inborn. This disagreement marked
an early stage of the nature vs. nurture debate in scientific though. Since the 18th century, psychologists and doctors have used feral children as case studies of how much human behaviour and knowledge is learned and how much is biologically inborn.
The first really famous feral child was Wild Peter, “a naked, brownish, black-haired creature”
captured near Helpensen in Hanover in 1724, when he was about 12. He climbed trees with ease,
lived off plants and seemed incapable of speech. He refused bread, preferring to strip the bark from
green twigs and suck on the sap; but he eventually learnt to eat fruit and vegetables. He was presented at court in Hanover to George I, and taken to England, where he was studied by leading men of
letters. He spent 68 years in society, but never learnt to say anything except “Peter” and “King
George”, although his hearing and sense of smell were said to be “particularly acute”.
The second case of wild child, I want my readers to know about is of Milly Sebba who one day in
1991, went further than usual in search of firewood and came upon a little boy with a pack of
monkeys. She summoned help and the boy was cornered up a tree. He was brought back to Milly’s
village. His knees were almost white from walking on them. His nails were very long and curled
round and he wasn’t house-trained. A villager identified the boy as John Sesebunya, last seen in 1988
at the age of two or three when his father murdered his mother and disappeared. For the next three
years or so, he lived wild. He vaguely remembers monkeys coming up to him, after a few days, and
offering him roots and nuts, sweet potatoes and kasava. The five monkeys, two of them young, were
wary at first, but befriended him within about two weeks and taught him, he says, to travel with them,
to search for food and to climb trees. He is now about 21 years old, and in October 1999 went to
Britain as part of the 20-strong Pearl of Africa Children’s Choir.
The third case is of Genie, who is the pseudonym for an American feral child who was a
victim of severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. Her circumstances are prominently recorded in the annals of linguistics and abnormal child psychology. Her father disliked
hence for 13 years and 7 months he kept her locked alone in a room. The extent of her isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result she did not acquire language during her childhood. Her abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles child welfare authorities on November 4, 1970.
Many psychologists have commonly believed that a child could not learn language after the
“critical period,”(puberty), but Genie even after being isolated for such a long time actually
displayed an ability to learn language, but never mastered grammatical structure. Scientists
now know that the critical period is crucial for learning to speak in complete sentences. Genie’s inability to master language was similar to adults who have had an extensive left-
brain stroke. These stroke patients usually leave out prepositions and articles and have trouble forming words. However, Genie’s issues with language were more extensive, especially as she seemed to have no sense of self and would use pronouns like “I,” “me,” and “you” interchangeably.
Despite Genie’s lack of language skills, her caretakers noticed it did not affect other areas of
her intellect, and she performed well on certain intelligence tests. Susan Curtiss, a member of the research team, explained, “Language and thought are distinct from each other. For many of us, our thoughts are verbally encoded. For Genie, her thoughts were virtually never
verbally encoded, but there are many ways to think. She was smart… She had other signs of
intelligence. The lights were on.”
When looking at how the wild children adapt to language it has been noticed that there is an
argument on whether genetics or environment play a greater role in how the feral children
develop language skills. Researcher’s debate that children are either born with a language
acquisition device, an innate ability to understand the principles of language; or that learning
the language is subject to what are known as critical periods in the child’s life when they are
most sensitive to external stimuli and can acquire certain skills. In Genies’ case, she was able
to pick up the basic concepts of language, but was not able to understand proper grammar and
how it worked. It is believed that she might have been born with some degree of mental retardation, but it was never proven to be true.
What I believe after reading above cases is that, there is good a chance of us being born with
the ability to learn language at a very basic level, but if we are not exposing to language at the
right time period we will be still able to continue our growth without it.
The creature Frankenstein’s case is similar to the case of any other Feral Child; just like them
even he is abundant by his father at the very young age, and his desire to live has motivated him to learn the things he has learn.
In the story Victor Frankenstein does succeed at creating a living being, but fails at creating a
human being. The creature becomes excluded from society, and tries to humanize himself
through knowledge of language. Here I would like to quote a line from the book:
Creature: “You gave me a body and a mind, Victor Frankenstein,
But you forgot all about giving me a conscience.”
Then the creature tells his story, and it describes his realization that he is aesthetically
different from humans and that humans find him ugly and terrifying. His narrative goes on to
describe, his realization that how important language is, and clearly hopes it will be the factor
that allows him to enter society despite his physical appearance.
Maureen McLane explores whether or not literature is a plausible means of humanizing the
creature in her essay Literate Species: Populations, “Humanities and Frankenstein”. She
writes the following: “Shelley's corporeally indeterminate but decidedly literate monster asks us to consider
whether literature-taken in all its bearings- was or is indeed a useful "line of demarcation between" human and animal. The fate of the monster suggests that proficiency in "the art of
language", as he calls it, may not ensure one's position as a member of the "human kingdom." Shelley shows us how a literary education… presupposes not merely an educable
subject but a human being”. McLane 959
Due to the fact that the creature’s knowledge of language does not allow him to enter society,
McLane feels that literature is not a useful way to differentiate between human and non- human in the novel.
In conclusion I would like to say despite feral children are scared and go violent on seeing
any other human being, but they can have a gentle desires to form relationships with humans.
They are intelligent so in some cases are able to he understands human language, but unlike other kids they not trained for curtain thing at the right age, their brains find it difficult to get us to things which other people do in their day-to-day life.
References
Primary Sources
•Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1997 Usborne Publishing Ltd, 2002. ISBN 5-17-
020444-2. Print Media.
•Webster, Noelle. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Creature’s Attempt at
Humanisation”. 2011, May.
https://www.albany.edu/honorscollege/files/Webster_Thesis.docx
•Keith, Fritha. 10 Modern Cases of Feral Children. 7 March 2008.
https://listverse.com/2008/03/07/10-modern-cases-of-feral-children/
•Box, Christy. 44 Remarkable Facts About Feral Children. June 4, 2018.
<https://www.factinate.com/things/44-remarkable-facts-feral-children/#>
Secondary Sources
• Brooks, Peter. "Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in
Frankenstein”." New Literary History” 9.3 (1978): 591-605. J S T O R. Web.
•Gigante, Denise. "Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein." Elh 67.2 (2000): 565-
87. J S T O R. Web.
•Mclane, Maureen Noelle. "Literate Species: Populations, "Humanities," and
Frankenstein." Elh 63.4 (1996): 959-88. J S T O R. Web.
•Reese, Diana. "A Troubled Legacy: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and the
Inheritance of Human Rights." Representations 96.1 (2006): 48-72. J S T O R .Web.
•James, Edward and Mendlesohn, Farah. The Cambridge Companion To Science
Fiction. Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press,
New York. 2003. E-book.
•Wikipedia contributors. "Monster." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Sep. 2018. Web. 6 Oct. 2018.
•Bjerg, Greg. "Feral Children." Damn Interesting. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2014.
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