Chapter 13 Summary and Analysis

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

Summary

Winter comes to an end, and the creature delights in the beauty of spring. One day as he watches the siblings listen to their father play guitar, the creature notices that Felix seems even sadder than usual. Then a knock comes at the door, and Agatha goes outside to find a dazzlingly beautiful woman on horseback. When Felix sees the woman he is overcome with joy and, kissing her hand, calls her his “sweet Arabian.” His father and Agatha greet the woman warmly as well, and all their sadness seems to be dispelled by her arrival. The creature learns that the woman’s name is Safie and that she and the cottagers don’t speak each other’s languages. He follows along as Felix teaches Safie several words of his language, then listens as the young man converses about her with his father late into the night. The next day, Safie sings and plays the guitar so beautifully that it brings tears to the creature’s eyes.

Spring goes on, and life in the cottage continues much as before except that its inhabitants are happy. The creature spends his days learning the family’s language along with Safie and improves even more rapidly than she does. Felix reads to Safie from Volney’s Ruins of Empires, and from this book and Felix’s explanations the creature learns about human history and civilization. This new knowledge leads him to wonder about the nature of humanity, which seems to include both good and evil and inspires in him both admiration and loathing. Realizing that he is fundamentally different from the cottagers, the creature also wonders about his own nature. He has no idea where he came from, knows of no one else like him, and is tormented by the idea that he might be a monster doomed to isolation, never to enjoy the affections the cottagers bestow on one another. He learns about the social hierarchy, gender roles, family relationships, and death, and the more knowledge he gains, the more loneliness he suffers. The creature thinks of the cottagers as his “protectors” in what he refers to as an “innocent, half-painful self-deceit.”

Analysis

The creature’s admiration of and love for the cottagers continues to grow as he watches them. “I longed to join them, but I dared not,” he says, as he remembers how he was treated by the villagers. To the creature, the cottagers’ lives look wonderful, but he realizes they are unhappy. The fact that he is “deeply affected” by their suffering shows that the creature feels the strong emotions that were so important to the Romantics. When the creature realizes that the cottagers are poor and that the younger two often go hungry so the old man can eat, he stops stealing their food and starts gathering firewood for them and clearing snow from their path. At this point the creature appears to be kind-hearted, altruistic, and eager to “restore happiness” to the cottagers and to avoid causing them pain—a far cry from the fiend Victor believes him to be. Indeed, the cottagers, who know the creature by his kind actions alone, think of him as a “good spirit,” and the creature’s compassion for the cottagers’ poverty echoes the concern Victor’s parents showed for the poor. Like Victor, the creature is also intelligent and curious, as illustrated by his desire to learn the “godlike science” of language and his rapid progress when he follows along as Felix teaches French to Safie, along with his naive but thoughtful response to what he learns from Ruins of Empires. Demonstrating his capacity for empathy, the creature says of the cottagers, “When they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathised in their joys.” Victor, on the other hand, still finds it extremely difficult to empathize with a being he himself created. Largely out of a desire for fame, glory, and ultimate knowledge, he created a living being, only to immediately reject and abandon that being and decide it was a evil simply because it was ugly. While recovering from his illness, Victor thought only of his own suffering, never of the suffering he might have inflicted on the creature. Instead, he tried to forget what he had done, and his selfishness resulted in tragedy. Though Victor does feel some compassion for the creature when he agrees to go to his hut, his feelings toward his creation are still dominated by hatred and anger, and his emotions and actions now contrast with the love and kindness the creature feels for the cottagers.

When the creature sees his reflection in a pool of water, he understands, to his horror, why people are so afraid of him: “When I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.” Seeing himself how the world sees him, the currently harmless creature internalizes the perception of himself as a monster—and eventually will come to embody that perception through his actions. “Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity,” he tells Victor. In addition to deeply upsetting him, this incident plants a seed of self-loathing in the creature’s mind. At this point he still believes that the “superior beings” in the cottage might come to love him in spite of his ugliness, but in the way he speaks about himself to Victor— calling himself a “foolish wretch,” for instance—it is evident that the creature has come to hate himself. For now, though, he still innocently hopes to win the cottagers’ hearts, growing more confident in his mastery of their language all the time. The creature’s soaring optimism at the beginning of spring echoes Victor’s own after his spring walking tour with Clerval, and he displays a similar Romantic love of nature: “My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope, and anticipations of joy.”

Learning about human history from Ruins of Empires and Felix’s comments on it is fascinating but troubling to the creature. “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?” he wonders. At first he doesn’t understand how one person could murder another, but as he hears more, he recognizes that humans have the capacity for both good—which fills him with admiration—and evil—which fills him with “disgust and loathing.” The creature is shown to be particularly empathetic when, along with Safie, he is moved to tears by what he learns about the genocide committed by European settlers against the indigenous peoples of the Americas. (This detail also echoes an earlier statement by Victor that the Americas should have been “discovered more gradually.”) The creature’s reactions to what he learns demonstrate the Romantic idea that people are born good, while evil is the result of harsh treatment by society. It also furthers the theme of the price or dangers of knowledge, a theme that runs through Victor’s side of the story and that relates to the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise, which is retold in Paradise Lost. Like Adam when he eats the forbidden fruit, the creature gains knowledge of good and evil, but the knowledge brings him suffering and costs him his innocence. What the creature learns about human societies and families makes clear to him just how alone he is in the world, and his “sorrow only increased with knowledge.” Like Victor when he thinks it would be better to be an animal than a human, the creature wishes he had never left his “native wood” or felt human emotions. The loneliness imposed on the creature is a torment to him, and he longs more than anything to join the web of human relationships and experience the love and affection the cottagers enjoy. “What am I?” he wonders. Without a relationship to any other being, the creature strongly feels the lack of an identity or purpose. His anguish at being without friends or family not only contrasts with the happiness of the loving family in the cottage but with Victor’s idyllic upbringing. It also echoes the ill effects that isolating himself from his loved ones has had on Victor, first in Ingolstadt when he was building the creature and now in Belrive as he suffers his secret alone. The creature’s longing draws attention to the importance of family and to the selfishness of Victor’s unwise decision to neglect his loved ones for years. Without the positive influence of Elizabeth, Clerval, and Alphonse, Victor’s worst traits—his selfishness and obsessiveness—went unchecked. Unlike Victor, the creature has no choice in his alienation from society; he longs for the support and affection that has been denied him by Victor’s rejection and by human beings’ prejudice against physical deformity.

Get Ahead with eNotes

Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.

Get 48 Hours Free Access
Previous

Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

Next

Chapter 14 Summary and Analysis

Loading...