Victor Frankenstein, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has created life in the form of a monster. This haunts him, and only becomes worse once the monster begins to terrorize his family. However, there are rare moments of peace that come to Frankenstein when he is alone in nature. Beginning immediately after the monster comes to life, to the end of the book, Frankenstein feels most comfortable in nature, away from people. One particular moment is after the deaths of Frankenstein’s younger brother and the family’s servant.
“About this time we tired to our house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o’clock and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free” (Shelly 78).
In this moment, Frankenstein expresses his displeasure of being separated from nature. Geneva’s shutting gates restrict him from exploring and finding a moment of peace when it is most necessary. Frankenstein is free to be anxious because of his previous actions in nature because he is alone and will not worry his family. Further in that passage, he states that he enjoys taking a boat into the lake and lets his mind wander as the boat finds it’s own way. The change in setting, from Geneva to Belrive, gives Frankenstein his relief. Geneva is a more populated area, but Belrive is implied to be a vacation home, a more private area. In addition to this, the opening of nature is also important. In Geneva, the day is limited, as well as the passage into nature. This nature is also tainted because Frankenstein’s younger brother was killed there. But Belrive’s nature is not closed off by a time constraint, and it is pure. This is what Frankenstein craves most; to be free and pure. But his creation of the monster has doomed him to be filled with guilt for the rest of his life.
Frankenstein’s desire to be with the purity of nature is a yearning for his interior to mimic his exterior environment. Frankenstein’s monster finds a similar peace in nature, away from humans who judge and scream at him. Frankenstein finds peace in nature because he is always away from other humans, but this is so that he can freely express his emotions and inner thoughts. Romantics believed in the power of nature, and Shelly was no exception, showing through her characters the calming power of nature. The end of the book, Frankenstein has been chased to the Arctic by the monster. He is at peace away from other humans, but no longer because it allows him to truly express his thoughts, but because he knows the monster cannot harm anyone but himself.
