Child Psychology: Substitute "Parents"
While it is helpful for students to recognize Mary Shelley's personal history, and the struggles and suffering she endured both as a child and as a parent, it is time for my students to revisit the idea of the lack of a parent, a guide who will be the vital supporter so that the child can maneuver through this complex world. Many of my students grow up in low income, single parent homes, or they are raised by a grandparent or by an extended family member. Sometimes the students may come from a two-parent home, but that is by no means a guarantee of a healthy, happy environment. Those students who are lucky are raised in a strong, supportive home with parents who realize their main purpose in life is to care, guide, and love their sons and daughters. The question then becomes who or what actually takes the role of a "parent" in those homes where there is an absentee or neglectful parent? For my students, I've seen the role of parent take on the shape of peers (whether in the positive, traditional peer sense or in the negative "family" of gang life), extracurricular clubs, sports, and church. I used to think that many of my students who spent endless hours after school, immersed in multiple activities such as sports or band practice or club meetings, were just overachievers. While some students indeed dedicate themselves to extracurricular activities, others are involved because this "school" life is much more stable, safe, and functional than the lives that await them when they get home. In the case of the Creature, education becomes Victor's parent and serves as his only sign of stability, safety, and functionality.
Where Victor fails to fulfill his role as a parent, books are the only things that can fill the void and serve as the creature's guide into love, knowledge, and sorrow. The books the Creature discovers while hiding in the hovel behind the DeLacey's cottage serve as his "mother" and "father", nurturing him but also showing him the painful reality of love and sacrifice. While some of my students are familiar with their parent's lecture about the danger of temptations, the Creature gains this lesson from John Milton's Paradise Lost. In terms of love and sacrifice, my students gain their insight from their parents' stories and warnings (or unfortunately what they glean from reality dating shows) while the Creature takes the lessons of love from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther. Lastly, the moral virtues and weaknesses of man may be revealed to my students by family members, friends, and role models, yet the Creature must settle for Plutarch's Lives to instruct him in this area of leadership. These three condensed readings—Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, and Plutarch's Lives— will be the basis for this jigsaw activity for my students. My students will not only identify the lessons the Creature learns from these texts, but will also stand in the actual role of Creature as they, like he, learn these concepts and literature for the first time.
As my students uncover the lessons of temptation, sacrifice, and leadership, I will ask them if there could be any substitute for a parent. In the Creature's case, all he has are the books he finds. What about the kinds of modern day substitutes that may fill the gap of an absentee parent, or the time and affection a parent cannot or will not provide? We have already discussed the various outside influences on a young person such as a gang, a "family" of sorts to supposedly "accept", "protect", and "guide" a young child. Students might also point to the materialistic items that some parents use as a symbol of affection and love, such as extravagant gifts in the form of the latest designer purse, the latest version of the iPhone, the cutting edge basketball sneakers. Can there be continued loyalty from child to parent— from the Creature to Victor—even if that parent has caused unheard of pain and suffering?
This debatable question centers on a few important aspects of child psychology. After all, the creature, despite his gargantuan size, begins as a child, newly formed and easily influenced. As a class, we discuss the old adage, "It takes a village to raise a child". In the creature's case, "It takes a village to ruin a child." According to psychologist Selma Fraiberg, the unloved child has the capacity to grow into the unusual adult, the deviant who seeks to compensate for his overwhelming displacement, his "nothingness" by inflicting pain on others—a form of announcing to the world, "I exist, I am". 17 By viewing the creature through Fraiberg's lens, we are able to see that it is not the creature's nature that makes him vengeful (as Victor deludes himself into thinking) but rather his magnified isolation and despair at the lack of human connections that Victor should have provided. As is the case with many (if not all) youth, there is an incredible yearning to win the approval of one's parents, as we have seen with Mary Shelley and her own parents. As a class, we discuss the current dynamics of this kind of parental stamp of approval, which in the best cases can lead to a child's excellence, and in the worst cases can lead to the dangerous extremes in which a child sets incredible and unattainable goals at the expense of everything else in life.
Valid questions are also swirling in a young child's brain when it comes to his or her place in society, specifically dealing with the protectors in his/her life. As a class, we move from Fraiberg's theory of displacement to child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim's approach to child identity. He notes:
The child asks himself: "Who am I?" " Where did I come from?" ... He worries not whether there is justice for individual man, but whether he will be treated justly. He wonders who and what projects him into adversity, and what can prevent this from happening to him. Are there benevolent powers in addition to his parents? Are his parents benevolent powers? How should he form himself, and why? Is there hope for him though he may have done wrong? Why has all of this happened to him? 18
All of these questions can be directly applied to the creature as a child. At one point or another, it is probable that my students have come across at least one of these questions in regard to their home life and parental figures. By recognizing Bettelheim's approach, students will be prepared to view the creature through the most basic question of identity—Who is the Creature really?
The impact of absentee parents is apparent in Shelley's construction of Victor and the Creature's relationship, if it can be called that. My students will begin to formulate their own opinions regarding Victor and the Creature as moral or immoral characters, but will first consider the kinds of ostracism that impact an individual. It is one thing to be cruelly shunned by society, but quite another when his own parent rejects him. As evidenced by the Creature's existence, man can thrive and live through communion and relationship with others, as isolation and solitude essentially represent man's death. My students are aware of various types of isolation, from extremely introverted students who walk solitarily on campus with eyes fixated on the ground to the hidden student in the back of the class who hardly says a word or makes eye contact with the teacher or his peers.
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