Answer any or all of the following questions:
Why does Victor destroy the female creature? Is his decision rational, impulsive, or both?
Did having Victor’s point of view on this matter force you reconsider the creature’s assertion that it is Victor’s duty to create him a companion?
How and why does Victor’s perspective conflict with the creature’s in volume III?
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Although Victor originally agrees to create a female companion for the creature in order to protect his friends and family from the violence of the creature, he is deeply conflicted about creating another creature and releasing it into society. He worries that “she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” and makes the decision to destroy the female creature. While his decision to destroy his work seems a bit impulsive because he does it in an act of passion, I would argue that his decision is actually quite rational because he is thinking about the effect the creature could potentially have on society.
Victor Frankenstein decides to create a female creature at the request of the original one. However, Victor decides to destroy the female creature at the last second in fear of the potential of the two creatures breeding. Although this reason is rational, this last-minute thinking is also impulsive on Victor’s behalf and he should’ve have considered that reason before making the female creature. Victor is also responsible for the needs of the creature, just like how parents should be responsible for their kids. However, Victor should not be responsible for the creation of the female creature because it would have created a similar experience for the female creature as the original creature has suffered through. Plus, the original creature requested a female mate because of the lack of any form of love. Even though it is a strange request for many people, I understand from his perspective the anger the creature has felt, but if he didn’t want to cause any more suffering, he should also consider the perspective of the female creature, even if it doesn’t exist yet.
The reason that Victor gives for destroying the female creature is provided in Chapter 20 page 202.“She might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.” Victor also reflected on the time he created his creature whose “unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse.” He does not want history to repeat itself or worse. In some ways his decision seems rational given what he had went through in the past but also somewhat impulsive because this would have been an opportunity to improve upon his creation.
I agree and liked what you said about how his decision was impulsive because it would have been an opportunity to improve upon his creation. He definitely could’ve used that time to develop and improve his knowledge and work.
There are a few reasons to why Victor decides to destroy the female creature. Although the monster is not naturally evil, he can not be sure that the female creature will not turn out evil, has he expresses “she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness”. Also, another major concern is that the female creature might reject the monster, making him feel more angry and lonely than he already is. All in all, Victor knows that it would be the safest opinion and it is the right thing to do. His decision does seem quite impulsive because he does have strong reasoning towards it, but his decision is mostly rational, given everything that has happened in the past and what he went through with the monster.
Victor destroy the female creature because he feels that he will kill the female creature just like the rest of the people he encounters. Victor is rational for doing this because the creature is getting out of control and people around them should not have to hear more devastating news. Victor point of view didn’t make me reconsider the creature wish because the creature is dangerous to himself and others. For starters, he inflicted harm on innocent people and since he is a lone and angry he can inflict harm to himself. As a result should not get a female companion because he does not know how to care about another being. Victor perspective gets into conflict with the creature since they get into an argument about the promise that victor won’t fulfill for him. Victor later tells the creature that the reason for he not creating the companion because he knew that he would kill her.
Victors main concern is fear. He fears that the new female creature will be just like the already existing monster or perhaps even worse than the monster. Victor has no control over his creature and because of that his brother is dead, so Victor feels like if he makes another creature, they might end up killing more people. This decision may have been sudden and impulsive, but I think it is a rational decision because the two of them can cause much more havoc than just one. Another reason I think its a rational decision is because if the female monster doesn’t want to be the mate of the other monster, Victors problems will double.
JAREEFAH’s POST
Victor, having made a deal with the Creature, promised to make one more unnatural being so the Creature would not be forced to live in solitude. However, once Victor started to make the Creature his bride to be, Victor was overcome with anxiety over the many different possibilities of his outcome. He said, “I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.” He had no way to be sure that the Creature would even keep his promise to live in the most secluded place in the jungle, or if he would continue to be a menace to society, now with a partner in crime. Victor imagined horrible futures in which his new creature was worse than the previous one, and even a future in which his two ungodly creatures reproduced to create “a race of devils.” Victor in that moment, so overcome with disgust with merely the thought of what might happen after he finished making a female version of the Creature, stopped everything and destroyed all of his work. Although Victor might believe that he was acting rationally, saving the world from more wretched Creatures walking around, Victor’s decision was also very impulsive. His split second decision to destroy all of his work in front of the Creature was what led to so many deaths. There were a number of ways Victor could have dealt with his growing anxieties about creating another creature. If he was worried about them reproducing, as the one creating her, he could have made it impossible for that to happen. If he were worried about them not living in a remote place, away from society, then he could have gone after them, the way he does later on in the books. He knows that although the Creature is stronger and more agile than humans, that the Creature was still able to get hurt, because the Creature told him about getting shot at. Had Victor thought out his plan, had he not been so impulsive, having an emotional outburst in front of the Creature, which led to him vowing to get revenge on him, then Henry, Elizabeth, and Alphonse might still have been alive by the end of the book.
Victor creates a female creature and suddenly thought that “I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it with the bitterest remorse.” , which caused him to destroy the female creature. He feels guilty about creating the first monster, and fears that the second creation may turn out to be even more dangerous than the first creature. Victor also ponders that the existence of a pair of monsters could endanger all of mankind and thinks of the future generations “I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest.”
Victor’s decision to create a female companion for his creation was an anxious attempt to use his power to right a wrong and obey the threat of the creature to prevent any further harm. He is on edge and distressed as he works so that when the creature appears looking through his window, he impulsively destroys the companion in a state of panic. With all the anguish and loss that had come from his first creation, he was able to reflect on the destruction he had enabled and rationally reconsidered making the same mistake again. “As I sat a train of reflection occurred to me, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing.” These thoughts were not apparent when he was shut away three years ago in his laboratory. He had been neglecting all relationships and interactions with the outside world alluding to the importance of environment in one’s ability to rationalize and maintain a moral compass. In losing touch with the natural world he seemed to lose grips with what was human nature.
To potentially prevent a race of devils and a creature far worse than the original were the main reasons Victor destroyed the second creature. As with the first creature, although it was not innately evil, theres no guarantee that it wont turn out to be evil in the future. Victor thinks its his moral obligation to not go through with finishing the female. Love is also not something that can be forced, and so there was a potential for it to reject the original creature, making the whole thing pointless. Although Victor initially starts the process to create the female creature in order to save his own life, he realized it would be selfish. He thought it out, was concerned for the future, for the human race, and decided based on all these things that could potentially go wrong. For all of these reasons, Victor’s decision in the end was rational.
Why does Victor destroy the female creature? Is his decision rational, impulsive, or both?
Victor destroys the female creature because of how he feared the female creature the same way he feared Frankenstein but more because of how he knows Frankenstein’s potential to be dangerous and considers the female creature to have the same potential if not, more. “She might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” (pg. 202). I believe Victor’s decision to destroy the female creature was rational because of how its likely that the female creature would have been treated the same way as Frankenstein by society and it might make her want to take out her anger on all of humanity as well. Victor destroying the female creature was his way of thinking of the race of humanity and the safety of the world, so it definitely was a rational choice.