Analysis of Frankenstein and Penny Dreadful in relation to responsibility

I am focusing on responsibility that Victor should have to his monster/creation. I feel that he should take more pride in his work and try to help his creation be a part of society again. In the book Victor is creating his creation from several different pieces of human and while doing this he is getting a glimpse at what he is creating, he should not feel terrified of his creation once it comes to fruition because he already sees what he is doing. He chooses to ignore what he has done and feels horrible for what he has created because he sees it as a monster and keeps this secret creation to himself. In doing this, the creation has no idea how to behave or what to do. Victor has helped to shape the person this creation will become into. In a lucky turn of events the creation finds a hovel to stay in near a cottage that has well-mannered people living in it so he can see that not everyone is as mean as his creator. Unfortunately, he looks like a monster so when he tries to approach the cottage people, they shun him and move away. He learns more that people will always fear him and now he turns to his creator and blames him for all that he is and decides that the only way he can be a part of this world is with a mate that is just like him. He forces Victor into agreeing to create another one even though he doesn’t want to because he hates what he has done in the first place. He eventually agrees to do it because the monster threatens to kill everyone that he loves. It’s possible that the creation wouldn’t have been so quick to anger and killing people if Victor had taken time in the beginning and shown the creation that there was a friend, he could confide in. Victor taking no responsibility led his creation to feel anger more than love and that shaped how he behaved.

The Victor in the show is a character who is incredibly fixated on his “research” and is consistently working on it. He is considered part of the “resurrection men” because of this work on corpses. When you first see him, he is intent on this arm he is working on and it appears he is figuring out how the muscle attachments work and nerves around it. He lives in a dilapidated apartment that is small but has a back room that is hidden by a door, this shows that he is being secretive with his work and not including people in it. While in conversation with another character he mentions that he “seeks the truth” and explains how most branches of science are not real and are only surface achievements to just have but what he sees is that there is “only one worthy goal for scientific exploration, piercing the tissue that separates life from death”. He talks about his studies in theology and the study of resurrection which is different from the book. In the book he is a little more discreet with his conversations about resurrection. In the show you get a glimpse of young Victor’s life. It shows he had a nice upbringing and an understanding mother, he was loved as a child. His mother gets deathly ill and dies in a bloody mess, this is imprinted on Victor because as soon as the funeral for his mother is over, he immediately starts researching the human body in a bunch of books. It appears his thoughts about resurrection started with the death of his mother and wanting her back
You get a glimpse into how the first creature is created in the show by a story within a story being told by the monster to his creator. You see him brought to life via electricity harnessed from lightning and he wakes up in a pool of blood screaming, it is a very tragic entrance into this world, and it scares Victor to the point where he runs away. This makes the creature consider himself an abomination and monster because the first person he sees runs from him. His second creature comes to life via lightning as well but wakes up more subtly and slowly which eases Victor because he is amazed at what he has done and starts to cry a little bit but doesn’t run away. He introduces himself and then helped the creature dress and teaches him how to eat. He discusses a name and mentions Adam but decides they aren’t very biblical, so he settles on the name Proteus. This is different from the first creation because Victor shows a lot more responsibility to the second creature, it appears the different awakening and the less scars on the second creation made Victor more apt to helping compared to his first creation which came to life intensely and was a little more disfigured.

In Penny Dreadful Victor has brought a person back to life and calls him Proteus and you see him take a great deal of responsibility in him by teaching him how to eat and read. He wants him to be a part of society again and so he teaches him how to behave and what to do, he even brings him around his own friends so he can see normal human interaction. The amount of responsibility that Victor in the show takes in his creation palls in comparison in the book. You learn, however, that Victor taking so much responsibility for Proteus is actually a learning experience because he has created another one prior to Proteus and the first one is very angry at his creator for abandoning him. The “first born” goes by several names in the show and the most common is John Clare which is a name he picks out for himself because it’s his favorite poet. John Clare was forced to learn human interaction and how to read on his own while sitting in a room watching out a window. This is very similar to the book when the creation was watching out the hovel at the people living at the cottage. Proteus is exposed to dogs, horses, fire, and women at the same time. He has had time to acclimate to who he is and learn some language with the help of Victor. Victor and Proteus seem to get along well and enjoy each other’s company. With the help that Victor gives to Proteus he isn’t scared of new experiences or of people. When he took his hat off around some children and they got frightened seeing some scars on his head he didn’t get scared or upset at them because Victor was there to comfort him and tell him it’s alright. Proteus starts to remember more language and his wife which makes him ask Victor what he is, and Victor realizes that he doesn’t have a good answer and doesn’t respond to the question. Without Victor helping his creature learn and grow he was able to get a very vindictive and angry monster and when he was a part of the learning and growing process, he was able to have a loving and gently creature. This shows the stark difference in Victor taking some responsibility in the monster he has created.
There are similarities in the responsibility that the Victor in the book and the show have in common when looking at the first creature created in the show and the creature in the book. They both are abandoned by their creator as soon as they came to life and learn about human interaction by watching people through a window. They both are very angry and would like a mate to be created for them, so they don’t feel so alone in the world anymore. The creatures are insistent that a second is created for them and are willing to kill people around Victor so he will work faster to have a second one ready for them. In the book the creature ends up killing everyone and eventually Victor dies which makes the creature feel good, so he goes off to end his life as well. In the show, Victor is talking to a colleague and the creature comes in and kills him and tells Victor to get back to work on his new bride. This angers Victor but makes him work harder to obtain a new corpse to reanimate for the monster. Both creatures get very upset over the amount of time it is taking their creator to appease them by creating a companion for their creature.  In the book the creature kills people by choking them to death and in the show, it is a lot more graphic. The first creation returns to Victor and kills Proteus, his second creation, by ripping him in half, and considers his death a mercy because now Victor can’t abandon him the way he did to his first. The creature returning to Victor is showing that he is making him take responsibility for his first creation before he can find happiness in a new one. This shows the resentment the creature has to Victor and how he doesn’t want him to be happy. Both creatures share that similarity, in that they do not want their creator to be happy due to the things they have been through. This shows the lack of responsibility that Victor gives to his creations. He was scared of what he did and ran from them, he learned that what he created was more monster than man. Both creatures become loathsome of humans due to the way they are treated. The book creature is a combination of men and seems to be large and disfigured. The show creature is large but doesn’t seem to be a combination of men, he seems to have scars all over his head and face and this is what makes people afraid of him during his time. The monsters in both the show and the book consider themselves to be freaks or monsters because of people’s reactions to them, they run away and scream in horror when they see them. This reinforces the idea that they are bad and without Victor beside them to help guide them through this they continue to get angrier at people and at their creator. Both creatures are created with increased strength and endurance, the creature in the book can run for miles and not tire so he uses that to continue to follow Victor wherever he goes without worrying about losing him. In the show the creature uses his skills to find work and try to fit into society. They both learned how to utilize the “gifts” they were given by being brought back to life.
The monster in the show finds a few people who look past his disfigurement and are willing to help him, they show some kindness to the monster which is lacking in the book. The monster in the show gets work at a theater by a gentleman who offers him work after seeing him beat up by a bunch of mean who were calling him a freak and a monster. The gentlemen tell him that his strangeness is not shunned in the theater and that he is welcome there. The creature finds someone who teaches him kindness which I think helped shape him into a more proper person and not so keen to murder several people or find Victor because he was unsure of what he was or what to do so he found his own way. The monster in the book is shunned by every person who sees him, and no one is willing to show him kindness and this makes him even more angry and insistent on having a companion so he can stop being so lonely.
If Victor had shown his creation some responsibility after he brought it back to life, then he wouldn’t have had a creation that was angry at the world and him for being created. He could have been a helpful person in society and learned how to assimilate back into society. The creation considered himself to be a monster due to the way Victor treated him and abandoned him when he was brought back. It was shown in Penny Dreadful that if Victor had shown some responsibility in his creation then it wouldn’t have been someone who murdered people and wanted his creator to be in pain. Responsibility would have been the turning point for the creation as to whether or not it would have been a mean killing monster or a nice helpful person.






Works Cited
Baldick, Chris (2019). Goldsmiths University of London, Retrieved from https://www.gold.ac.uk/ecl/staff/c-baldick/
Kuiper, Kathleen (2019). Marry Wollstonecraft Shelley, Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft-Shelley

Anonymous (2019), mini biography John Logan. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0517589/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm