Love in Human Nature (And the Monster)

The Monster created by Frankenstein reflects the need of love in human nature. In the beginning, the Monster knows nothing of heat and cold, light and dark, hunger, solitude or what it was like to be loved. Like a child, his innocence was ripped apart by the cruel events he goes through while trying to be accepted by all he encountered. What he learnt throughout the time he had been alive was from his own experience. Victor’s role as a parent was vague, since he did not think of the Monster as his child, but as a curse he had to put up with and who was now blackmailing him into creating another of his own. After learning about marriage, love and what it was like to have a family from the cottagers, the Monster wanted to have someone too—someone who would love him, nurture him and give him all that his fellow humans had neglected. Since all the attempts to be accepted by humans had failed, his last resource was to convince his creator to create a female of his kind. Through Safie and Felix, the Monster had learnt about companionship and how it can change someone’s life to have next to you someone to love and that loves you back. Before Safie arrived at the cottagers’ house, Felix was mostly sad and he acted like even though he had two companions who loved him dearly, something was missing--and as soon as Safie showed up, everything changed for good: “Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy,” (Shelley 78). I think the Monster felt that a female companion, just like Safie, but of his kind would change his existence for good too and he even expresses that feeling when he asked Victor this wish: “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.” (Shelley 98).