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Did Victor do the right thing in Chapter 20 of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein?

When, during Victor Frankenstein's very lengthy encounter with his creation, the "wretch," the monster proposes an arrangement whereby, if Victor will agree to create a female companion for him, he will disappear forever from Victor's life, the young scientist is forced to ponder the possible ramifications of this agreement. In Chapter 20 of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor does indeed proceed to consider the potential consequences of bringing into the world another creature the destructive nature of which could bring about more problems. Early in this chapter, Shelley depicts her protagonist as a tortured soul, struggling desperately for the right answer to the question of whether to abide the creature's proposition:



"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 sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not . . ."



Readers of Frankenstein will recall that it took Victor but the briefest of moments to regret his efforts at reanimating dead tissue while away at university. Readers will also, however, recall Victor's determination to pervert nature with insufficient consideration of the consequences of those actions ahead of time. His pursuit of scientific discovery is so single-minded that he gives little thought to the practical implications of his actions. He does, in fact, question himself in this regard, but any reservations about tinkering with nature are subordinated to his quest for discovery. Now, with the creature's proposal in hand, Victor is equally determined to prevent himself from making the same mistake twice, and herein lies the question of his decision to deny the creature the female companion he had promised. The creature's reaction to Victor's decision to destroy the female companion on which he had already made substantial progress is described in the following passage from Chapter 20:



"The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew."



The creature's reaction, of course, is to continue to murder everybody close to Victor, including his new bride, Elizabeth, and his closest friend, Henry Clerval. So, when considering whether Victor made the right decision when he tore apart the female creature on which he had labored for the benefit of the male creature to which he had given life, it is advisable to consider the immediate ramifications of that decision: the brutal murders of the two people left in his life to whom he was especially close.


The creature had promised that he would disappear from the company of man forever if Victor created a female companion for him. Victor initially relented, and then, in front of the creature, went back on his word, violently tearing apart the female. Assuming the creature was a "monster of honor," in effect, that he would enter into the arrangement with Victor with honorable intentions, and would depart for some remote location for the remainder of his days, then Victor could not have made a worse decision. Victor was correct that he could not foresee the possible implications of bringing into the world a second monster, but he knew beyond doubt that, failing to follow through on his end of the bargain, he guaranteed that the living creature would continue his reign of terror. Personally, I would have built the female creature. The entire point of the creature's exceptionally long monologue regarding his experiences with the blind man and his family was that he wanted nothing more than to live peaceably alongside normal beings. Only when rejected, as with Victor's initial reaction upon observing his creation, did the monster destroy. Complying with the terms of the agreement, then, would have been the safest approach to take.

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