Victor Frankenstein
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Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
[edit] In Shelley's novel
He is the son of Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, the latter of whom died of scarlet fever when he was young. Victor had two younger brothers — William, the youngest, who was killed by his creation, and Ernest, the middle child, who wants to join the Foreign Service like a "true Genevese". Victor fell in love with his adoptive sister, Elizabeth Lavenza (in the 1818 text, his biological cousin; in the 1831 revision, a blonde among Gypsies whom his mother doted upon).
Frankenstein is a young Swiss student of chemistry, who after studying chemistry at the University of Ingolstadt, becomes obsessed with the idea of creating life in inanimate matter through artificial means, dropping out of school to pursue the alchemy of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa.
Assembling a humanoid creature perhaps by stitching together pieces of human corpses, perhaps by the use of a chemical, apparatus or a combination of both (he avoids the question three times when asked, though the fact that he noted lightning striking down a tree in his childhood is a prominent clue), Frankenstein successfully brings it to life only to be repulsed and terrified by its monstrous ugliness. He abandons and flees his creation, who disappears and soon embarks upon a journey of vengeance that results in the deaths of several of Frankestein's family and friends.
Frankenstein pursues the "fiend" or "daemon" (as he calls his creation) to the Arctic with the intent of destroying it; he ultimately fails in his mission, however, and after relating his tale to the captain of a ship of explorers that has picked him up, he dies of pneumonia. His creature, upon discovering the death of its creator, is overcome by sorrow and ends the novel by vowing to commit suicide.
[edit] Characterization
While many subsequent film adaptations (notably the 1931 movie Frankenstein and the Hammer Films series starring Peter Cushing) have portrayed Frankenstein as insane (the prototypical "mad scientist"), Shelley's original novel depicts him more as a man tragically driven by ambition and scientific curiosity, unable to deal with the consequences of his actions in "playing God" (not Shelley's words), or being an irresponsible, neglectful parent.
