PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM of “FRANKENSTEIN”

M. ALI AKBAR RAFSANJANI

120810461

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

AIRLANGGA UNIVERSITY

2010
 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Literary criticism is a study about evaluation, and, interpretation of literature.

Literary criticisms are not always and have not been theorist. Literary criticism should be

considered from review books, not only from the theory. Many people the way doing

literary criticism use to analyze literature work. For example novels, books, poem, prose,

and so on. With literary criticism we can see literature work from another point of view,

and not only use by our rational but also can use our feeling. Here, I would like to

analyze the novel by Mary Shelley; the title is “Frankenstein”. I would like to analyze

using psychoanalytical theory approach. Before I analyze, first of all let us know first

who is Mary Shelley and what kind of problems or issues which arise in her novel in

order to the readers know what problems the writer will going to talk about or analyzed.

Mary Shelley was a British novelist and the daughter of William Godwin and

Mary Wollstonecraft. She was born August 30, 1797. She was the wife of Percy Bysshe

Shelley of Ozymandias and had William from the wedding. Mary Shelley started writing

Frankenstein at summer in 1816 and the novel published at 1818.

Frankenstein tells about Victor Frankenstein, a professor who was born in Geneva

and growing in a wealthy Swiss family. He didn’t have any friends but Henry Clerval. At

the age of nineteen, he became a smart student, but suddenly his mother died. It was a

great shock form Victor. After the death of his mother, he went to Ingolstadt, Germany to

attend the university. In the university he interested in natural philosophy and it became
somewhat an obsession. Probably because the feeling of losing his mother, Victor has

desired to make a creature from discarded corpses perhaps one “like him”.

The paper aims to analyze Victor Frankenstein’s psychological state and the

relationship between Mary Shelley’s experiences with characteristic of Victor

Frankenstein. I use psychoanalytic approach to analyze them.

1.2 Statement of the problems

The research questions in this paper are:

1. How does psychoanalytic approach explain the motivation behind

Victor Frankenstein’s decision to create human?

2. Is there any relationship between Mary Shelley’s experiences with the

novel? What is it?

The Nature of the Unconscious Mind

In this part, I explain Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein tells about a professor

who has desire to create inanimate object being animate object. The strange idea becomes the

obsession. Further, neither one thing nor another he gathers the inanimate resources from

human corpse. Directly, we can see there is something wrong inside him. Through

psychoanalytic Freudian, it’s called as the unconsciousness mind. If we look Frankenstein’s

childhood, he was born in rich family and full of love. He loved his parents very much. He

thought they like an angel in a whole in his life. But, when he was teenager, his mother was

died. He had beaten with this moment. He felt lose his mother. He felt a part of his life is

missing. Connected with this, psychoanalytic Freudian had notion there is immature

sexuality in which Frankenstein wanted to replace his dead mother and recreate his mother,

but as an alternative he made a creature comprised of the socially self-conscious elements of

Frankenstein and his wish for his mother. Frankenstein’s creature comprised all of the

unacceptable personality of humans, those we usually suppress. These personalities may

actually be a representation of those personalities that Frankenstein wishes he had. And the

other his experience was when he child, he curious with anything about nature secret. He saw

a thunder struck tree in his villa. He thought how wonderful power from thunder could strike

the tree.
 THE DEFENSES

The defenses, The defenses include selective perception, selective memory, denial,

avoidance, displacement, and projection. In this story, this defenses aspect is reflected by Victor’s

behavior after he made the monster.

. After Frankenstein successfully to create his monster. Frankenstein has a patience create

his monster step by step. But when he successfully, he felt disappointed with his monster,

because the monster didn’t match with his expectation. Frankenstein decided to leave his

monster directly. He thought his monster seems an accident. After the Frankenstein

leaves his monster, the monster felt loneliness. The monster found the creator and his

family. The monster killed the creator’s family one by one. Because the monster revenge

with the creator, the creator didn’t have responsibility after he created the monster. So,

the monster killed the creator’s family, in order to the creator to feel what the monster

feels. One of the defense mechanism forms is denial. Victor Frankenstein had this kind of

form when he saw the monster for the first time; he didn’t believe that the monster which

was in front of him at that moment was created by him. He denied that the monster was

exist, and created by him. Denial is the process of our mind to get rid off something that

we don’t want to remember.

Another form is revenge. The monster had revenge towards Victor, because

Victor didn’t want to create another monster (female monster, to be exact). The monster

felt that Victor didn’t want to give him any love, so he thought that Victor didn’t have a

right to get a love in his life either. It is the same as if I don’t have money, so why should
I give you money. So, in this case the monster had revenge towards Victor because he

cannot have a love.

THE MEANING OF DEATH

Death is unavoidable. Freud believed that there must be an account for

death work (Tyson 1999:23). However, Freud put death as the opposite of sexuality.

Death is human’s biggest fear; it responsible to the fear of loneliness, fear of intimacy

and fear of abandonment. Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein have the same

experience about death. Shelley losing her stepsister and son, and after that here husband

also.

In the story, Victor Frankenstein was left by his beloved people. Start from her

mother, then his young brother-William- killed by the monster which he created by

himself, Elizabeth, Henry, and then his father. He cannot avoid the death of the people

whom he loved. He had to face the death of his beloved people and accept the death,

because as I mentioned before, death is unavoidable.

THE MEANING OF SEXUALITY

The last aspect is the meaning of sexuality. Sexuality is essential meaning of

human life. In the meaning of sexuality Freud also defined self into superego, id, and ego. In
my point of view, sexuality itself related to ‘male’ and ‘female’. The monster in this story didn’t

find a monster which had the opposite sex, so he didn’t experienced love.

Superego is a part of us that internalizes social and moral value and determines our

opinion about right or wrong. Contrasting superego, id is the psychological container of our basic

instincts and libido, our sexual energy. Superego is showed in victor’s behavior when he regrets

the bad result of his experiment because his monster out of his expectation. And then the id is

showed when Victor does his experiment without purpose.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we can learn psychoanalysis criticism through Frankenstein novel.

We can take message from it and understand it. The reason why Frankenstein creates the

monster because he feels lonely and a part of his life is missing. The most important thing

that we can take from Frankenstein is when we have to think a lot before take a action for

get the best determine its advantages or not for ourselves and people around us.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Los Angeles: Calga Publisher. 1970.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 1999