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Frankenstein a la Shmoop

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Mommy Issues

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What's with all the mommy issues in Frankenstein?

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And just kind of to recap a few things that are going on -

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We have Walton, who is writing the entire story to his sister.

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It's a little intimate, but okay.

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- Intimate meaning sexual, incest-y, kind of? - Overtones. Yeah, yeah.

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That's what I -- You know, subtext, Dave.

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[ laughs ]

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We're not subtle at Shmoop. It's baseball bat over the head.

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And then we have Victor Frankenstein,

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who is essentially supposed to marry his adopted sister.

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Again, incestuous.

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And then, you know, Henry is actually one of the

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few characters in the story who's not related to Frankenstein.

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So there's tons of family issues, mommy issues.

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And we can really attribute this to anything.

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People who like to read into the life of the author

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as why certain happen in books.

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We have Mary Shelley,

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whose mother was the super famous feminist.

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Her dad ran off with her mom

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and, this was, like, totally unacceptable.

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As I mentioned, she had given birth twice

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by the time she wrote this book.

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So a lot of people think of the monster

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as a metaphor for childbirth.

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Some people say Victor Frankenstein is

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supposed to be Percy or her dad.

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So there's -- A lot of people like to read

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the biographical information onto it.

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But the question is, you know,

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still, "Why are the men in the book so obsessed with

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their sisters and with their female relatives?"

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And, on the one hand, we can just be like,

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"Okay, they're just weirdos."

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But most scholars tend to read

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a Freudian reading of it.

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Which basically means that the reason they're writing to their sisters

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is because they're narcissists.

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A family member is the closest you can come to yourself, right?

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And so we have Walton writing to his sister.

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Frankenstein is supposed to marry his sister.

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And there are so many

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interrelated family members in the entire story,

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that it's this idea that Walton and especially Victor Frankenstein

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just are so self-obsessed

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and have such egos on them -

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and this is very classic in Romantic heroes -

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that the closest they can get to talking into a mirror

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is writing to their family members.

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Why are the men in Frankenstein so obsessed with their female relatives?

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Hmm? Hmm?

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