Nature vs Nurture
What really makes a monster? Nurture appears to be a HUGE factor but there is a balance here that can go very right or very wrong.
Some could say that the Monster was poorly created in the first place (nature), but in the novel it seems much more so that his “upbringing” was mostly to be blamed for his dark, violent behaviour.
The whole “challenging God” thing would seem to suggest that the Monster was a monster from the inception - from the moment Victor created him as an abomination - the Monster is a living blasphemy
The information we get in Chapter 10 seems to show us a Monster who is just a baby, not a monster at all, but a big piece of possibility
Appearance is Reality
The brutal reality of being judged by your outer self.
MLK - famous speech - I have a dream, an awesome dream… where we can be judged not by the colour of our skin, but by the content of our character…” (in so many words)
The Monster is an extreme and very dramatized version of this situation
The Monster represents the person who does not fit because of their face, body, skin, etc…
The closest references are racial or medical or sexual, etc - the monster might have an insight into a more female sense of what this is like - to be OBJECTIFIED by one’s looks
For one’s value to be not in their person but in their appearance
Part of this is that whole reduction of a person to a part or some parts - i.e. a guy with nice abs becomes just a set of nice abs - he doesn’t need a personality or skill or integrity, etc… (this happens to almost all women every day every where all the time)
The defining aspect of his entirety is his appearance, which is not standard, not “attractive”
The frustration of being a woman in THAT time period (early 1800s) must have been amazing, considering how frustrated women are even now…
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