Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein grapples with the long-contested issue of nature vs. nurture, which explores the concept of how much a person’s behavior and personality are mostly the outcome of nurture, genetics, or outer influences such as environmental factors. Within the text, nature vs. nurture is modeled by the Creature and one could argue that Shelley uses the Creature to emphasize that he was not born inherently evil, but rather his violence was a direct outcome of his abandonment and lack of nurture growing up.
To begin, the Creature is a living being regardless of his genetics. He was “born” with no knowledge of the world around him like any other “child” and Victor Frankenstein was the “father” who was meant to guide him through his life. Instead, he went through life alone, confused and afraid. The Creature himself states how he was stripped of those rights and how “’No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses’” (Shelley 91). He had never known the nurturing side of people and had only ever been shown rejection and violence. For example, when he first meets his “father” figure, Victor runs away in …show more content…
He realizes that had he been brought up differently, he would have been at a different point in his life, a different person. This is explicitly stated when the Creature compares his initial start in life to Adam, who he could not be more different from. However, in reflection, he states that Adam much like him was also “created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence…[but]…he had come forth from the hands of God…but I was wretched, helpless, and alone” (Shelley 98). Had Victor been there to nurture him in the ways of the world and good like God, the Creature would have known right from wrong and would not have had the pent-up feelings of rejection and sadness that eventually caused him to lash