A Brief Reflection on Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often discussed as a novel which has a vested interest in determining whether or not the monster at its heart, Adam, possesses any innate humanity. We are often asked to ponder whether or not the monster is innately good or innately bad. This is a somewhat legitimate interpretation of the novel, and a not unreasonable question to ask; however, Frankenstein in practice never questions Adam’s humanity, and instead wonders about his personhood, and whether it merits citizenship. Shelly’s novel is interested more in this than any question of humanity, which is evident in the person whom Adam, Frankenstein’s monster, is juxtaposed with as soon as he begins to consider himself a person: Safie. Before she arrives, Adam does not see any part of himself within the human persons he sees in the quaint cottage. He cannot identify with them, or really learn and grow with them. However, once Safie appears, he gets the opportunity to gain personhood with her; he fails, while she succeeds, because she can do something which he fundamentally cannot. Safie can erase all parts of her which do not allow for her to be granted personhood, while the monster cannot. Indeed, we see that personhood is not truly what Adam is lacking, what he lacks is citizenship; Adam is not a monster because he lacks humanity or personhood, he lacks the ability to gain citizenship which allows society to deny him personhood. The central issue of Frankenstein can be thus recontextualized, no longer as an issue of humanity versus monstrous nature, but as an issue of immigration and the ability to integrate and assimilate into a culture. Safie learns to assimilate, while Adam fundamentally cannot, and therein lies the true conflict of this novel. 

When I say personhood, I refer not to agency, and not directly and specifically to sapience. Sapience can perhaps be stated as the abstract thing which my idea of personhood, within this essay, points to. Personhood in this essay refers to the innate quality which entitles a sapient being to respect and autonomy within society, to citizenship and recognition by the law. This innate quality, which one may call sentience for simplicity’s sake, is what causes the law to grant us rights, what causes our fellow man to treat us with respect, and what causes decent people to help us when we have need of it. I must, however, maintain that personhood is distinct from sentience, as it can be and is routinely denied to persons all the time, in the case of Adam, but also in the case of Safie and her father. Shelley displays agency being taken away from Safie’s father when he is arrested and put to death not for a crime, but for his positionality within society as a Muslim man, who has been deemed unworthy of wealth or status by European society (Shelley 137-138). Safie is also an individual whose personhood may be taken from her at a moment’s notice, on the basis of her being a woman within her society, which Shelley displays by saying “Safie … sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia, and only to occupy herself with puerile amusements … The prospect of marrying a Christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take rank in society, was enchanting to her” (Shelley 139). This passage shows us that Safie realizes that womanhood strips her of citizenship, or protection under the law, within her home society, that her positionality within her society can allow for her rights to be taken, for her to be denied rank and education.  

Adam is familiar with this kind of disenfranchisement; every time he attempts to interact with human society, he is rebuffed, often violently, and is not allowed to have any position at all within society. He recognizes this when he says “I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome … Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” (Shelley 136). Adam believes that these distinctions put him outside of the realm of man, outside of humanity, but this is not true. He is endowed with reason, he has an inclination to be interested in and to contribute to society, as can be seen with his entire adventure with the cottagers. He learns and becomes well versed in the ways of European society with them, he helps them survive at no direct benefit to himself, and he does all the work necessary to assimilate into their culture. Alongside him, Safie is doing identical work, and dealing with an identical burden; her womanhood and her Muslim identity bar her from true citizenship within European society, much like they barred her father. Her father, despite having many more advantages than Adam, was similarly spurned and hated, the state conspired to destroy him for his lack of citizenship, their own lack of acceptance of his personhood. Safie is that man’s daughter, and she is wealthy, and she is a woman to boot. By all logic, she should end up just as disenfranchised as Adam. And yet, she succeeds in her assimilation, and Adam does not. 

What Safie may do that Adam may not is erase the fundamental difference which disallows her citizenship. She may, and she does, deny her Muslim identity and heritage for the sake of a place within European society. She leverages the Christianity of her mother and the interest of Felix to earn a place in European society. Once she learns the language, she can erase her native tongue; once she marries Felix, she can erase her foreign heritage. She can find new positionality in European society as a woman who erases all the undesirable parts of herself, because she is a woman. She is desired. Adam cannot do this, because he is not desired, and he has no positionality. He fundamentally cannot assimilate, because (much like Safie’s father) he cannot erase himself. What differentiates him from the dominant culture is indelible and permanent, and as a result he fundamentally can never attain citizenship, can never have his personhood recognized, must always have it denied. Here we run into a problematic aspect of this text; whether intentionally or not, it proposes not a question of what constitutes humanity, but a definitive answer as to what makes assimilation into a new nation possible. The answer is that assimilation can only happen if one’s native culture is erased, and that certain people, or certain types of people, fundamentally cannot be accepted into that society, and must be demonized for that. That inability to assimilate is a fundamental failing inherent to the individual, and not a systemic problem.  

One could argue that this is not what Shelley is advocating, and I would certainly capitulate that we cannot know what Shelley meant by this text, and it would be unfair and unreasonable to say that Shelley thought that Islam was fundamentally incompatible with European culture in much the same way as an animated corpse is. However, the text reflects this idea whether Shelley intended it or not. The text implants this idea with its opening line on Safie’s father, saying “The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin,” (Shelley 137). How is that so? The father objects to his daughter marrying outside the faith. Perhaps this is unfair, but not unreasonable for the time, and I highly doubt a European man of that era would accept his daughter marrying a Muslim man, or any nonwhite man for that matter. He “deceived” Felix with hope of the union, but the book itself gives proper justification as to why he did, saying “he knew he was still in the power of his deliverer, if he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they inhabited” (Shelley 140). The consequence of such a betrayal would be his death; why on earth would he risk his own life on a stranger’s kindness, a kindness which seemed very dependent on his daughter. Perhaps the merchant also objected to his daughter being bartered for his life, but we never get that perspective. Furthermore, his family’s ruin is caused directly by the French government; the Turkish merchant had nothing to do with it, and had no social or political power to aid them in any way. How, exactly, is the Turkish merchant responsible for their ruin? Why is he painted so negatively in this narrative?  

The simple reason is islamophobia. His fault was not in his action, but in his identity. He was wrong to be in Europe, and the only solution for that wrong was to surrender his daughter and leave. Adam’s fault is much the same. He is bad because of who he is before he does anything wrong; he is a foreigner, an outsider, a person with no positionality within European society. The fact that his origin is so closely tied with that of a Muslim woman and her father’s failure to assimilate, and that Adam turns out to be a violent and antisocial bad actor cannot be extricated from his identity as a foreigner. This is not so much a novel about humanity, it’s a novel about a total failure and incapacity to immigrate. The attitudes behind this failure are wrong-headed and fabricated. There is no meaningful barrier to entry behind people with these kinds of differences beyond plain old bigotry, and by looking at Frankenstein through this lens, we can perhaps see the text and this issue in a new light.