1

Creating a Monster, or The Anatomy of a Literary Family:

Social Rejection in Shelley, Wollstonecraft and Godwin

Victor Frankenstein was a terrible father- he created a human life, rejected him instantly

because he was deformed, and quickly abandoned him. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is not a

horror story; it is a human story, with an emphasis on the careless creation of life and the

systematic deconstruction of a life when lived in hopeless solitude, rejection, and despair. Like

most myths, Frankenstein is also rooted in other works of art. Two texts in particular written by

her mother and father provide the groundwork for Shelley’s vision of the social outcast. Maria,

or The Wrongs of Woman and Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams provide

a startling context with which to examine Shelley’s novel from a cultural perspective. Together,

these three novels are not only bound by striking similarities but they compliment each other in

such a way that it is essential to read them as companion pieces.

Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman, written by Mary Wollstonecraft and Things as They

Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, by William S. Godwin, were written in the first

person narrative, closely resembling the Monster’s retelling of his own misfortunes to his

creator, Victor. In Maria, Wollstonecraft tells the story of an institutionalized woman, Maria,

who finds a kindred spirit in woman who has suffered endlessly from an unforgiving society.

Jemima is born into virtual slavery because of the unfortunate stigma of being a bastard child.

Jemima’s mother dies nine days after she is born and she makes several references to the effect

of being raised without a mother: “I cannot help attributing the greater part of my misery, to the

misfortune of having been thrown into the world without the grand support of life- a mother’s
 2

affection” (Wollstonecraft 200). It is notable to mention that Wollstonecraft died shortly after

Mary Shelley was born; Victor Frankenstein also loses his mother, and the monster himself is,

like Jemima, born without “the feminine caresses which seem a part of rearing a child” (198).

The monster articulates these same feelings to Victor: “No father had watched my infant days, no

mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses” (Shelley 110). Jemima’s account of her painful

experiences is in the spirit of Victor’s confessions to Robert Walton. Victor and Robert’s

confinement on the doomed vessel presents the similar inescapable setting of the institution in

which Maria and Jemima are confined.

Several passages of Maria are eerily reminiscent of Frankenstein: the monster’s

description of himself and the treatment he receives from others: “No wonder then, treated like a

creature from another species, that I began to envy, and at length to hate…” (198). At first,

Jemima envies the people whom her step-mother loves, but when she realizes that she will never

be loved in return, she turns to hatred. “I could have murdered her at those moments,” (199)

Jemima says when she witnesses her father playing with her sister. Shelley’s monster also turns

his hatred towards those people that his creator loves the most: William, Justine, Henry, and

Elizabeth. “Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was

benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend (Shelley 94). The monster’s goodness, like

Jemima’s, was corrupted by rejection and his hatred was as boundless as the potential for further

rejection.

The monster’s physical abhorrence can be likened to the social stigma that is assigned to

Jemima. The monster’s face is described in gross detail: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the

work of arteries and muscles underneath; his hair was of a lustrous black; his teeth of pearly

whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that
 3

seemed almost of the same colour of the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled

complexion and straight black lips” (60). Jemima’s place in society as a “…wretch, whose nose

must be kept to the grinding stone” (Wollstonecraft 199) is made a physical manifestation by her

step-mother: “…for I was sent to the neighboring shops with Glutton, Liar, or Thief, written on

my face” (200). The monster and Jemima each repeatedly refer to themselves as wretches

throughout the two texts and consider themselves to be without a shred of hope due to their

terrible solitude in life. “I was despised from my birth” (200) Jemima relates to Maria, “…

without having any companions to alleviate it by sympathy, or to teach me to rise above it by

example” (200). The monster faces the similar and instant rejection by his creator on the day of

his birth as a newborn man: “…breathless horror and disgust filled my heart,” (Shelley 61)

Victor says as he describes the moment he watched his own creation come to life. His own child

repulses him and he flees the scene of the birth. “…I was wretched, helpless and alone” (116)

the Monster tells Victor, “Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage

him; but I am solitary and abhorred” (117). Shelley and Wollstonecraft each take the familiar

face of a social outcast to a terrible extreme but Shelley takes Jemima’s female organs and

replaces them with those of dead men.

Jemima and the Monster both describe their dwelling places as barren hovels: “I escaped

to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare…” (98) The monster’s

hovel is out of doors while Jemima’s is enclosed within the walls of her masters: “Confined then,

in a damp hovel”; (Wollstonecraft 198) Jemima’s home is a prison where she is tortured by her

step-mother and her children and deprived of any human kindness like the monster hiding in the

village. The monster’s final desperate attempt at finding solace, friendship, and love in his

human neighbors is devastated when the DeLacey’s reject and fear him, causing him to flee his
 4

hovel and set out on his revenge. Jemima describes the painful yearning for love and affection

when she hears her step-mother request a kiss from one of her children: “I will kiss you ma’am!”

Jemima cries, but her offering of love is rejected: “and how did my heart, which was in my

mouth, sink, what was my debasement of soul, when pushed away…” (198) Jemima begins to

steal “from absolute necessity” (200) and eventually closes her heart to any human affections

from fear of further rejection; she is hardened by her suffering; the monster chooses murder.

The solitary existence shared by Jemima and the monster are also evident in a character

created by William Godwin. Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams is a

novel whose main character is a social outcast, doomed to live in solitude and without the

promise of human kindness or affection. Godwin’s character is neither a woman born into

slavery or a man composed of corpses and resurrected from the dead. Caleb is from another

extreme of consequence: a man ostracized from society on the presumption of murder, a crime

that he did not commit. “I was shut up,” Caleb narrates, “a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst

of my species” (Godwin 193). The following lines could very well have been spoken by

Victor’s monster: “Why are all the engines at work to torment me? I am no murderer; yet, if I

were, what worse could I be fated to suffer? How vile, squalid, and disgraceful is the state to

which I am condemned?” (194) Like Jemima and the monster, Caleb attributes the breadth of his

suffering to the exclusion from friendship and social contacts: “…The greatest aggravation of my

present lot was that I was cut off from the friendship of mankind” (194). Hunger and poverty are

no consequence in the face of extreme solitude: “…were all of them slight misfortunes compared

to this” (194). Caleb desperately desires the friendship of Mr. Collins, as Jemima desires her

step-mother’s, and the monster, the DeLacey’s. The emotional well being of each of these
 5

characters is dependent upon the acceptance and support of those people to whom they are

reaching out in desperation.

What Mary Shelley accomplishes with Frankenstein is something that neither

Wollstonecraft nor Godwin were able to achieve with their respective texts. Maria or The

Wrongs of Woman, and Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, both present a

heartbreaking portrait of people who are victimized by the societies in which they live and who

cannot break free from the cruel disgrace that is wrongly attached to their names. But what

makes Frankenstein the more enduring tale is that the victim retaliates with proverbial ferocity

and society is held responsible for their actions. The monster’s rage against the terrible injustice

that has been place upon him is inescapable. Victor’s attempts to avoid the ultimate

responsibility are futile and, although he tries, he cannot outrun justice. Wollstonecraft and

Godwin were equally concerned with the timeless perils of social inequality but it was Mary

Shelley who made it the most clear that assigning social stigmata to the helpless is indeed a

dangerous business. Although many who are poor or socially degraded will remain in their

hovels, obeying social rules and man-made laws, some will also revolt. It is as true today as ever

that the ruined will share their devastation with the fortunate and the poverty line will always

intersect with the murder rate.

 6

Works Cited

Godwin, William. “Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams.”

Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2nd Edition. Boston: Bedford St.

Martins. 2000. 193-197.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2nd Edition. Boston: Bedford

St. Martins. 2000.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. “Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman.” Frankenstein. Ed.

Johanna M. Smith. 2nd Edition. Boston: Bedford St. Martins. 2000. 197-

200.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman. Electronic Text Center.

University of Virginia Library. (1999). 10 March 2007.

http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/WolMari.html