NAME THAT QUOTE!

FOR THE QUOTE YOU’VE

BEEN GIVEN:

Who said it?

What’s the context?

What you can say about the language/ narrative technique?

What links can you make to themes/ ideas/ context?

FOR EXAMPLE.. .

‘I was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child,

the innocent and helpless creature bestowed upon them by Heaven...whose

future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery.’

• Victor on his parents in early chapters.

• Hindsight imbues a sense of poignancy, but also establishes difference between Victor’s creation and natural

• God-like of his own birth. Theme of responsibility destiny, implied by ‘future lots’.

• Ominous nouns ‘idol’ / ‘plaything’; V seeks to break suffocating love?)

‘What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I

may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the

needle...I may satiate my ardent curiosity...’

(Walton to his sister, embarking on voyage. Romanticises his

voyage/ language mirrors Victors/ establishes parallel between the

two/ verbs suggest both discovery and desire)

‘The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a dedicated lamp in

our peaceful home.’

(Victor on Elizabeth/ overly idealised imagery/ verb ‘dedicated’

suggests selfless nature/ located within domestic sphere, quickly takes

on the mother’s role)

‘When I reflect...on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no

longer see the world and its works as they appeared to me me...now

misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters

thirsting for each other’s blood.’

(Elizabeth to Victor, following the execution of Justine. Sense of irony

as Victor ‘true murderer’/ enlightenment of Elizabeth breaks domestic

idyll/ education of Elizabeth enlightens to an extent; link to

Wollstonecraft/ dark imagery; Gothically ominous)

‘Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but

was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my

own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke

from me frightened me into silence again.’

(Creature on early days. Sense of pathos/ narrating the birth

experience/ exploring empiricist ideas of learning/ sensation based/

creature presented as ‘good’; supports argument that he is a product of

environment)

‘Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind,

when it has seized on it, like lichen on a rock.’

(Creature on knowledge that he is ‘ugly’ and therefore will be rejected/

highlights aesthetic prejudice/ implies knowledge can be singular and

consuming/ his simile demonstrates skill and clarity; has insight very

quickly, unlike Victor?)

‘The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me – not I,

but she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am

forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone!’

(Creature’s justification for murder of Justine/ pivotal moment;

descent into ‘Satan’ or becoming monster/ allusion to PL and destruction

of Eve/ Biblical language mirrors PL and sense of almost Old Testament

vengeance)

‘His words had a strange effect on me. I compassionated him

and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon

him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart

sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and

hatred.’

(Victor on listening to creature/ Highlights aesthetic prejudice/

contradictory clauses or parallel phrasing highlight contradiction/ outlines

central tragedy of creature’s fate)

‘Could I enter into a festival with the deadly weight hanging

around my neck and bowing me to the ground?’

(Following Victor’s agreement to create a female mate, he must

delay wedding until it’s done/ allusion to ancient mariner/

responsibility/ suspicious delay to marriage with Elizabeth?)

‘Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the

hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have

banished myself forever from my native country, and wandered a

friendless outcast over the earth, than have consented to this

miserable marriage.’

(Victor suggests he misread the creature’s threat to be with him on his

wedding night/ raises questions of narrative reliability/ trying to

exonerate himself ?)

‘Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for

the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds

until death shall close them forever.’

(some of creature’s final words to the dead Victor/ closure and

perhaps moral superiority afforded to the creature/ interestingly, the

‘remorse’ and awareness of his sin is his greatest ‘wound’ which directly

contrasts Victor’s final words!)

FRANKENSTEIN – MARY

SHELLEY

Revision

SOME IDEAS

A novel of doubling and reversal – Walton/Victor,

Victor/Monster, Victor/Clerval, beauty/ugliness. Home or the

domestic/wild nature and the laboratory

masculine science wrests secrets from feminised nature

Monstrous moral and legal systems – Justine

The monster’s treatment creates his desire for revenge and murder

KEY IDEAS

Knowledge

Women

Sublime

Family/Parenthood

Education

Science/Technology

Victor seeks knowledge for his own

reasons

Does not consider the ramifications

Walton also does this

Victor focused on Alchemy before going

to university and learning about new science

Rime of the Ancient Mariner about the

death of imagination in man and embarkation

on quest for spiritual and intellectual

knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE

KNOWLEDGE

“unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of

the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale and you will dash

the cup from your lips.”

Victor cautions Walton against seeking knowledge – can be linked to

concerns in the industrial age that unbridled use of knowledge can lead to

disaster – “ I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not

be a serpent to you as mine has been” 4th letter to MS

We see Victor’s obsession with learning in ch.2

EDUCATION

Romantic education – self taught

Adventures provide a source of growth

Walton self educated “my education was neglected, yet I was

passionately fond of reading.”

Walton, however, also had a practical education aboard a whaling

ship.

EDUCATION

The creature learns from the DeLacey’s

Typical Romantic reading list

No- one to guide him in his learning

‘There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or

assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I

declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had

formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’

Safie is educated also by the De Lacey’s

PARENTHOOD/FAMILY

Elizabeth’s mother died early during childbirth

Her family taught her to care for the poor (another key concern of the novel)

Victor does not care for the creature he ‘parented’

Rousseau’s ideas on education – children should learn naturally – Shelley

critiques this

Victor is the real monster – he neglects his own ‘child’

Critiques the cult of the individual, of solitariness and introversion of the time.

Walton asserts that he will keep going

over the ‘untamed yet obedient’ regions

Nature, or the stars will witness his

success.

Eerie arctic setting

Elizabeth – “none could behold her

without looking at her as a distinct

species, as being heaven sent, and bearing

a celestial stamp on all her features”

SUBLIME/NATURE

SUBLIME/NATURE

Creature feels uplifted by the natural world

Victor rows on Lake Geneva

Victor wants to ‘pursue nature to her hiding places’ – this leads him to neglect

his friends and family

Once he achieves his dream ‘now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream

vanished, and breathless horror and disgust fill my heart’

Landscapes in ch. 10 are icy, barren and inhospitable, as alien to warm humanity

as Frankenstein’s manic desire. Sublime becomes dangerously inhuman.

Humphrey Davy, Luigi Galvani,

Giovanni Aldini and Erasmus

Darwin

Science to describe or science to

intervene

Monster made from parts of

animal as well as human –

monstrous

SCIENCE

Background figures here – not

considered as confidants

Elizabeth is Victor’s “sister” he takes

it for granted she is his

Justine takes the blame for the death

We never meet Margaret Saville

Elizabeth’s wedding night – Victor

things primarily of revenge – she dies

Women as mothers – Victor is clearly

not this

WOMEN

FREUDIAN

INTERPRETATION Victor as the id, who acts out his sexual and aggressive natures by seeking to become God.

Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic aparratus defined in Sigmund Freud’s

structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and

interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of

uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the

organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.[1] The super-ego

can stop you from doing certain things that your id may want you to do.[2]

The creature then, represents the ego which must work with the demands of the real world and come

to terms with societal rejection.

Walton becomes the superego or the conscience that relates the acceptable and unacceptable

behaviour.

These three characters represent the struggle of man and his conscience with the good and the bad,

the learned and the ignorant.

FRANKENSTEIN

Themes

The Elements

Nature

Good and Evil

Death and Destruction

The supernatural

Dreams

Sanity and insanity

Revenge

Exploration

Imprisonment and confinement

Mans inhumanity to man

Loneliness and Isolation

Ambition

Journeys

Science

THE ELEMENTS

• In a novel which deals with power and raw, elemental emotion, it is

not surprising that Shelley makes extensive use of the elements. The

power of the natural world is an apt representation of the characters’

shifting emotions. These are often externalised using the elements,

such as when Frankenstein observes after Elizabeth’s murder: ‘the sun

might shine, or the clouds might lower; but nothing could appear to

me as it had done the day before.’

THE ELEMENTS

Shelley’s use of the elements is highly significant, especially her

deployment of pathetic fallacy ( use of the weather or the landscape

to reflect events, moods etc) to create atmosphere. The most striking

use of the elements occurs at moments in the novel where rationality

and balance are least in evidence.

THE ELEMENTS

The elements are a central part of the nature that Frankenstein

loves so much. At times however they are part of his punishment.

The physical punishments of cold and exposure on the sea of ice, for

example, and the hardship of the elements on the Scottish isle, are

like divine retribution for his presumption in creating life and his

foolhardiness.

THE ELEMENTS

The power of the electrical storm when Frankenstein returns to

Switzerland starts a thread of elemental imagery which runs

throughout the novel. The electrical storm makes possible

Frankenstein’s experiments with galvanism and the creation of the

monster: the awesome, destructive power of the storm represents the

destructive power of Frankenstein’s own desires.

NATURE

Shelley had very close connections with the Romantic movement,

which was profoundly engaged with the natural world. Her husband,

Percy Bysshe Shelley, was one of the great Romantic poets, as was his

close friend Lord Byron. Wordsworth was also a major figure, and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner had a

particularly profound influence on the novel.

NATURE

• The Romantics saw nature with its abundance and wildness as

symbolising everything they admired and wished to promote. They

rejected what they saw as the restrictions of balance, order, and

objectivity and profoundly mistrusted the advances of empirical

science. Frankenstein, the empirical scientist, wishes to apply rigid,

scientific rules to the act of creation, producing an object not

beautiful but hideous.

NATURE

The range of extreme and dangerous locations that Shelley

employs reflects the nature of her tale and the perilous moral

dilemmas it deals with. These landscapes and locations also resonate

with the key themes of isolation, death and destruction. They

symbolise the inner turmoil and upheaval of the monster,

Frankenstein and other characters.

The ambiguity of nature – both beautifully creative but powerfully

destructive is key to understanding Frankenstein.

GOOD AND EVIL

• The tale is an exploration of good and evil in the human soul. The

novel explores how good can be turned into evil. The monster initially

loving and benevolent is transformed by his rejection by humanity

into a vengeful predator. The monster’s initial loving and kind nature

is corrupted by his association with man. It also considers the

potential of human science and human nature for both good and evil.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Death, destruction, putrefaction and disease are closely linked in

Frankenstein. From early on we know that Frankenstein cannot

survive for long after his rescue from the drifting ice; he is mortally ill.

Death constantly hangs over events; one by one Frankenstein’s family

dies at the hands of the monster. It is ironic, however that these

deaths spring from Frankenstein’s driving desire to create life.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

• Physical death and destruction can symbolise the death of Frankenstein’s moral

responsibility, the destruction of his hopes and dreams and the breakdown of the

monster’s innocence. It is therefore fitting that the novel should end with the deaths of

both creator and created. Life becomes a living death for both the monster and

Frankenstein. Frankenstein wishes for death after the murder of Clerval.

• ‘I was overcome by gloom and misery, and often reflected I had better seek death’

• ‘ [I am] they creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the

annihilation of one of us.’

THE SUPERNATURAL

• The supernatural in Frankenstein is unusual. While the novel fits

within the Gothic genre, which frequently deals with the supernatural and

refers to the supernatural on many occasions, it deals not with ghosts and

spirits but with reality. The consequences of Frankenstein’s scientific

experiments. The monster is superhuman – taller, stronger than his

human counterparts- but he is not supernatural. The monster is flesh and

blood (albeit constituted from the reanimation of various parts of

corpses).

THE SUPERNATURAL

Shelley is restrained and mysterious in her description of the

monster except for Frankenstein’s brief description of the monster’s

watery eyes and yellow skin allowing the contemporary readers to

paint a picture for themselves.

THE SUPERNATURAL

• Although the creature is a creature of flesh and blood with genuine

human emotions, other characters often react to him as if he were a

ghost. As he stalks Frankenstein across Europe, he shares many ghost-like

qualities. The ability to appear almost out of nowhere being one of them,

his ability to survive on barely any food (nuts and berries), his ability to

traverse Europe with no money, presumably stowing away on ships. He

can be compared to other Gothic wanderers like Dracula, Melmoth and

the Wandering Jew.

Other typical supernatural elements are incorporated into

Frankenstein through Shelley’s use of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

with its supernatural occurrences and Paradise Lost with its angels and

demons.

DREAMS

• Dreams are important in two ways: first as hopes and aspirations;

secondly as sleeping visions. For Victor, they impinge on each other -

in trying to live out his aspirations as a scientist, he creates a living

nightmare.

• ‘The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I

sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented

itself to my mind with the force of reality.’

‘The past appeared to me in the light of a fearful dream.’

‘Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare’

SANITY AND INSANITY

• On many occasions in the novel we question the sanity of what we

observe and the characters often do so themselves. Frankenstein’s and

Walton’s frantic pursuit of their dreams creates an atmosphere of

unpredictability and fear. At the outset Frankenstein alerts us to the

unbelievable (insane?) nature of his story. The persistent presence of

madness also serves to emphasise the dangers inherent in Frankenstein’s

enterprise. Frankenstein breaks down after the death of Elizabeth and

literally ends up incarcerated in an asylum.

‘For they had called me mad; and during many months, as I

understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.’

REVENGE

• Frankenstein and the monster are locked in an endless cycle of vengeance.

Frankenstein’s refusal to care for the creature makes this inevitable. The monster

wishes to avenge the lack of care and love that he rightly considers is his due.

Frankenstein’s failure to do this leads to the monster’s isolation and loneliness. The

monsters seeks revenge not in killing Victor but in destroying everything he loves.

In his turn Frankenstein wishes for vengeance, seeking to destroy his creation. ‘[I]

ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal

revenge on his cursed head.’

EXPLORATION

• Frankenstein is full of explorers and exploration. Walton is seeking

to find the Polar passage, Frankenstein is exploring the mysteries of

science. Shelley herself explores human experience and the dark

recesses of the human mind. Nearly a century before the work of

Freud and Jung Shelley is exploring the divided self and the shadowy

world of dreams. The novel is also exploratory taking the Gothic into

new psychological depths and paving the way for science fiction.

IMPRISONMENT AND

CONFINEMENT

• Frankenstein is increasingly imprisoned within dreams and fantasies that resolve

into nightmarish reality. He finds himself trapped into a relationship with the

monster and a promise to create a partner for him which he then disastrously

breaks. Both Frankenstein and the monster are trapped in a cycle of revenge and

hatred. Frankenstein is literally imprisoned in Ireland after being wrongfully accused

of Clerval’s murder (echoing Justine’s wrongful imprisonment and death). But

declares ‘to me the walls of a dungeon or palace were alike hateful.’ And later put

into solitary confinement in an asylum.

IMPRISONMENT AND

CONFINEMENT

The monster, rejected by Frankenstein and society, and trapped in

isolation. His kindly benevolent nature is trapped by the ugliness of

his body. The hovel where he lives next to the De Laceys is a pathetic

symbol of his confinement, he can only leave when it is dark. The

monster’s rejection is universal so the world becomes for him a prison

he can only escape through death.

IMPRISONMENT AND

CONFINEMENT

• Elizabeth is trapped by her barren relationship with Victor.

Frankenstein leaves her alone on her wedding night in a blind attempt

to protect her from the monster. Safie’s father is incarcerated in a

Parisian prison, the victim of racial discrimination. Safie is trapped by

her father’s desire to control her destiny. De Lacey is trapped in a

world of blindness, although ironically this enables him to be the only

person to see the monster’s essential humanity.

HUMAN AND INHUMAN

• Humans are often guilty of great inhumanity. The monster is shot

after rescuing a girl from drowning, he is chased out by Felix after he

finds him talking to De Lacey. Shelley’s treatment of this issue causes

us to question humanity’s ability to treat others with kindness and

love. The monster in a Marxist interpretation can be seen as symbolic

of the oppressed working classes, trying to better himself but treated

with disdain and horror by those in a better position than him.

LONELINESS AND

ISOLATION

• Frankenstein isolates himself in his studies in Ingolstadt from his

family and friends and later from his fellow researchers. Walton laments

his own isolation and lack of companionship. The monster is rejected by

society due to his ugly appearance. Clerval, left alone by Frankenstein, is

murdered. Elizabeth is left alone fatally on her wedding night. The De

Laceys become social outcasts. Justine is isolated in prison and threatened

with excommunication by a priest. Safie is left alone in Paris, then forced

to travel alone to find Felix.

AMBITION AND

DETERMINATION

• Sometimes noble and sometimes less so. Frankenstein and Walton

are determined to pursue their dreams. Frankenstein is later

determined to pursue the monster and kill him. The monster shows

determination in his ability to survive, his acquisition of knowledge

and language and later in his own determination of revenge. The De

Laceys and Safie show great loyalty and determination in the face of

hardship.

JOURNEYS

Frankenstein and other characters make repeated journeys. In the

later stages of the novel, Frankenstein and the monster are engaged in

a perpetual journey. Their physical journeys often into rugged

inhospitable places reflect the characters psychological journeys into

the dark interiors of their minds.

SCIENCE

Wordsworth, like other Romantics, decried what he called the

‘meddling intellect’ and looked for meaning in the human heart. He

argued that science, with its tendency to dissect the natural world and

its endless desire to define and categorise, was the negation of poetry.

How far do you think this idea is useful when thinking about

Frankenstein?

NOBLE SCIENCE

• There are clear signs that the pursuit of science can be both noble and

elevating. The ability to explore and to analyse the world in which we live

symbolizes the power of the human intellect, and at its best elevates the

individual and improves the mass of humanity. Both Frankenstein and

Walton begin their explorations in the hope of benefiting the world

through their work. Frankenstein initially aspires to finding a way of

preserving life while Walton wishes to find a quicker and safer trading

route than those currently used by sailors.

DANGEROUS SCIENCE

While Shelley is never overtly critical of the practice of science,

she is keenly alert to its many potential pitfalls and dangers. Science

seeks to extend the bounds of human knowledge, and this extension

of the frontiers of conventional understanding is risky; it leads to

moral choices, which may or may not be made sensibly. Walton and

Frankenstein both struggle to contain their passion.

• They are swayed by arrogant desire. Hearing of Walton’s dreams of

finding a polar passage, Frankenstein observes: ‘Unhappy man! Do you

share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught?’

• The monster symbolises the destructive potential of irresponsible

science. The monster symbolises Frankenstein’s uncontrollable thirst for

knowledge, externalising his monstrous desires and their hideous

potential.

SCIENCE AND TABOO

• Shelley demonstrates that the human race is on the brink of the

unknown, and questions the wisdom of pressing heedlessly into it for

fear of the ‘monsters’ that may emerge. Shelley’s use of Milton and

the stories of Adam and Eve suggests the forbidden nature of the

scientific discoveries that Frankenstein pursues. Like Adam and Eve,

he finds himself tempted to reach for the forbidden. He wants to

push on to enter the secret citadels of science.

• At the end of his life, Frankenstein recognises something of the

error of his ways and the impact the pursuit of the forbidden has had

upon him. He observes to Walton:

‘A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and

peaceful mind, and never to allow his passion or a transitory desire to disturb his

tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this

rule.

If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your

affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can

possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the

human mind.’

OUTSIDERS

The outsider is a classic figure of Gothic fiction, representing

The unknown

The unacceptable

The damned

The fearsome

The horrific

Mythical figures such as the Wandering Jew, the vampire and

Frankenstein’s monster are central to both literary and popular

tradition.

All Shelley’s major characters are outsiders, disempowerment, loss

of identity, loss of cohesion, loss of relationships and the destruction

of familial and societal ties are all significant contributing factors.

Frankenstein has a large number of outsider figures. Why do you

think that is?

In pairs – decide on how these characters could be seen as

‘outsiders’

Frankenstein

The monster

Safie’s father

Safie

Walton

Clerval

Mrs Saville

Elizabeth

Frankenstein’s father

Justine Moritz

The De Laceys

FRANKENSTEIN

• Victor Frankenstein, largely through his own fault, is isolated in his

own family, then at the university, and finally left alone in the world. His

choice to isolate himself from his loving and protective family is both

surprising and ominous. The contrast between domestic security and

extreme isolation is stark and heightens his personal tragedy. The monster

reduces him to the ultimate life of the outsider, chasing backwards and

forwards across Europe, with no security and no hope of refuge.

FRANKENSTEIN

He is an outsider within the natural world, separated from the

beauty of godly creation; he is an outsider separated from his creator

by means of his own presumptuous desires and rebellion. In

transgressing acceptable boundaries, Frankenstein suffers

psychological and societal exlusion.

THE MONSTER

• Human society will not accommodate the monster because of his

looks; people reject him on the assumption that his character is

reflected in his features. His rejection by Frankenstein, his creator,

serves only to compound his sense of isolation. His life in the hovel

next to the De Laceys’ loving and caring home captures the pathos of

his situation as he desperately seeks to fit into the world around him.

THE MONSTER

• He is isolated from his creator and from the rest of creation by the

absolute will of Frankenstein, and is therefore condemned to a life

outside the bounds of society. Realising that the conventional happiness

of human existence and companionship are not to be his, the monster

offers to live voluntarily as an outsider in the wilds of South America if

Frankenstein will create him a mate, but is further isolated when

Frankenstein destroys the companion he has been creating for the

monster.

SAFIE’S FATHER

Safie’s father is an outcast in Parisian society simply because he is a

foreigner. He goes on to alienate himself from his own daughter by

his ungrateful and churlish betrayal of the De Laceys.

SAFIE

Safie shares her father’s isolation in Paris. As a Muslim woman,

Shelley explores her lack of rights in a patriarchal society. When her

father betrays the De Laceys, she finds herself separated from her

own flesh and blood, preferring to risk all in her attempt to be

reunited with Felix.

WALTON

Walton is isolated from his family and from the security of home

by his travels. Like Frankenstein, he is a self-imposed outsider burning

with ambitious desire. On board ship he is isolated from the crew by

his position as captain and by his desire to press on towards the pole,

even in the face of the most extreme danger. He recognises his lack

of a good companion and the potential dangers of this.

CLERVAL

Clerval is marginalized in Frankenstein’s affections during the

creation of the monster, and is again distanced from him, in spite of

his great loyalty, on their trip to England. Clerval’s desire to go to

university is opposed by his father, but unlike Frankenstein, Clerval

resolves the difficulty and does not alienate himself from those he

loves.

MRS SAVILLE

Mrs Saville is an outsider who is given no voice. She is simply the

intended recipient of Walton’s correspondence. This correspondence,

owing to Walton’s being on a ship, can only be one-sided, and as such

is scarcely a correspondence at all. As Walton is Frankenstein’s sole

audience, so Mrs Saville is Walton’s.

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth is an orphan – an archetypal outsider figure. She gains

the love and acceptance of the family, but is increasingly marginalised

in Frankenstein’s affections by his studies. Her acceptance (like Justine

Moritz’s) in the Frankenstein household contrasts starkly with her

treatment at Victor’s hands.

FRANKENSTEIN’S FATHER

Frankenstein’s father is profoundly changed by the death of his

wife. This is further aggravated by the way Frankenstein shuts him

out of his confidence when he goes to Ingolstadt. As his family

members are killed one by one at the hands of the monster, he is

more and more acutely isolated, until at last he pines away.

JUSTINE MORITZ

Like Elizabeth, Justine is an orphan. She becomes an outsider to

society when charged with William’s murder, although she never loses

the faith of her adoptive family.

THE DE LACEYS

The De Laceys lose both social position and wealth when they

courageously support Safie’s father in the face of popular prejudice.

When Safie’s father treacherously betrays them, they are forced to flee

Paris and to live a humble and lonely life in Switzerland, a situation

exacerbated by their poverty.