Victims in 'Frankenstein'

Who are the victims in Frankenstein? What do they have in common? For example, what are the similarities between the backgrounds and situations of Elizabeth and Justine? How do they differ? What is it that defines them as victims? Justine is a victim of the monster, but she is also a victim of an unjust judicial system.

Many of the victims in Frankenstein are victims of the desire for revenge. However, instead of taking revenge against the perceived perpetrator of the original offense, the most effective form of revenge is presented as an act against the innocent friend or relative of, for example, Victor. The monster takes his revenge through attacking those most dear to Victor. So, by abnegating his responsibility for his creation, Victor rejects the monster and sets in motion a chain of events over which he subsequently has no control.

The framing of 'Frankenstein'

To what extent does 'Frankenstein' offer multiple narrators in order to provide multiple points of view? Can it be argued that, while offering alternative viewpoints, Shelley and, arguably Bronte in 'Wuthering Heights', do not differentiate between the voices accorded to their various narrators?

Beth Newman in 'The Frame Structure of Frankenstein' argues:

The novel fails to provide significant differences in tone, diction and sentence structure that alone can serve, in a written text , to represent individual human voices, and so blurs the distinction that it asks us to make between the voices of its characters.

How far do you agree with this view?

Predictably off on a tangent...

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a1896

Our homework requires us to look at a source of Dore's pictures of TRotAM. However, since he's also done pictures for Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy and The Raven (prolific, really, isn't he? I'm thinking of borrowing him for my art project now...), his work's very appropriate for our Gothic topic. : )

So, just a quick link to his stuff on Gutenberg.