Victor`s Career and the Chronology of the French Revolutionary Period in Mary Shelly`s Frankenstein

Abstract

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor expected his Creature to be beautiful, but he found his creation hideous. The Creature appears horrible because he represents the French Revolution, which should have ushered in a beautiful new era but instead brought terror. Piecing together the chronology from the clues in the novel, we see that Victor lived from 1771 to 1799, and that he brought the Creature to life in November 1793, during the Reign of Terror. The Creature hears news of the French Revolution from the republic of Geneva, the city that Victor had left to go to the University of Ingolstadt. However, Victor can never return to the peace of his life as a child in Geneva, which, in contrast to France, preserves the image of the classical liberty of the Greek cities and Rome. The Revolution in the French nation cannot recreate this earlier kind of small-scale republican society because its large geographic size renders it impossible to do so.