Education as a Pharmakon in Mary Shelley``s Frankenstein.

Abstract

In what follows, then, I would like to concentrate on Shelley`s portrayal of the monster`s education, which occupies at least one-third of the novel, to cast light on both the ways in which the monster develops-through language acquisition-from "a creature of fine sensations" to one of "evil passions" (120-21), and the ways in which his growth as such may very well show Shelley`s aim to unveil education as, in Derrida`s terms, a pharmakon, them`elange of both remedy and poison, pleasure and pain (99).