Frankenstein: Deep Down We’re All Afreud
Analyzing any piece of literature through a psychoanalytical lens is a unique and deep process. Seeing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through this view point explains and clarifies Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s behavior. The most common and reappearing patterns of action can explained by to his unconscious use of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are a way someone copes with reality and a painful event, whether it was in the past or present. He heavily relies on them to help avoid emotions and sometimes to portray his flawed qualities into his work. Throughout the novel, Frankenstein uses defense mechanisms such as repression and intellectualization to help deal with his daily life and past experiences.
Repression is a commonly used defense mechanism and occurs when the individual pushes unpleasant memories or emotions into his or her subconscious in order to avoid dealing with or thinking about them (Changingminds.org). Individuals often engage in repression intending to deal with emotions at another time, or unknowingly hoping that the memories will fade and go away on their own. Frankenstein uses this mechanism to push his own horrific thoughts of his past into his subconscious, only hoping to forget them. At one point in the novel, one of Frankenstein’s repressed memories comes back to his conscious mind, “…But when the mark of the fingers was mentioned I remembered the murder of my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes…” (Shelley 153) The remembrance of his brother’s murder affects him not only mentally, but physically. Another time where Frankenstein seems to repress an event is when his mother, Caroline, dies from a painful scarlet fever, “[She] was dead, but we had still duties to perform; we must continue our course…and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst the one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.” (Shelley 29) Here, Frankenstein does not spend...