Early in Shelly’s Frankenstein, the idea of incest is introduced not only once but quite a few times. Victor Frankenstein views the adoption of Elizabeth as a gift for him, a “beautiful present.” We must keep in mind Victor is young when this happens so he takes his mothers words quite literally. He is simply not old enough to convey this as a mere joke. When his mother is dying on her deathbed, she tells Victor that he was to marry Elizabeth. I wonder if this type of thing was socially acceptable in the time this book was written. In today’s world, incest is a taboo which leads to anger when its reported on the news, but in the 1800s, it was common to marry a cousin or something of that nature, like in Castle of Otranto. It is not clear in the text if Victor blames Elizabeth for his mother’s death, but it is something to think about as the idea is introduced a few times throughout the text. If they did not adopt Elizabeth, his mother would not have caught the Scarlett fever. In our second assignment (chapters 5-10), more incest is introduced when Victor dreams of kissing Elizabeth who also turns into his decaying dead mother. I feel this has a Freudian atmosphere, in the idea maybe Victor secretly was also in love with his mother in a way not of mother and child. I don’t really have enough evidence to explain this further, only just pitch the idea out there, but I could analyze this another way [Upon re-editing this post, I can agree that because she is decaying and not pristine this idea is not very strong, but I will leave my original writing intact as I give another analysis next as well]. The dream can also suggest his mother is haunting him because he is not keeping in contact with Elizabeth. The result of this is that Victor is refusing to comply with his dead mothers dying wish.
-Carlos Moncada
I also think that in today’s society it wouldn’t be acceptable to marry your sister even if it was an adopted sister. I believe that if this happens today, you will be judged by many people. Maybe, Victor’s mother thought that it was acceptable because Elizabeth was adopted and didn’t have their family’s blood.
I don’t consider Manfred from ‘The Castle of Otranto’ actions to be considered incest, just because the story never really enphasized an actual love connection towards Isabella. I believe Manfred was only reaching out to her for power. In Frankenstein, the idea of Frankenstein marrying Elizabeth shouldn’t be considered incest either because there’s no actual blood correlation between the two. Now, the “love” you speak of between Frankenstein and his mom is very queer. That is considered abnormal and I believe that Frankenstein marries Elizabeth because of his affliction with this monster. He feels dreaded with the threat this monster burdened on him.
While i was reading the book i thought it was crazy how he could want to marry someone of his own family. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that big of a deal to them but from the society we live in today that would be pretty weird.
While i was reading the book i thought it was crazy how he could want to marry someone of his own family. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that big of a deal to them but from the society we live in today that would be pretty weird.
Incest was something that was looked down upon along time ago as well. However some nobels married within family groups to maintain power within the bloodline rather than having it disperse between many families. This practiced could be seen in the many children with mental issue who took reign over countries. Their mental state was brought by genetics similarities.