The Education of Victor Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein’s education largely comes from reading scientific textbooks, albeit many are fictional or fantastical sciences, but nonetheless scientific in nature. The Monster’s education largely comes from reading the religious text Paradise Lost. How is this a metaphor for Althusser’s claim that “the church has been replaced today in its role as the dominant ideological state apparatus by the school” (1348)

Althusser claims that schools “ensure the subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’”(1337). However, Gramsci believes that “the more extensive the ‘area’ covered by education and the more numerous the “vertical” “levels” of schooling, the more complex is the cultural world, the civilization” (1006); is then a civilized world defined by its subjugation to ideology?

The monster claims he intends to flee to the wild untamed country—by all accounts, the “uncivilized” parts of the world, i.e., places with the least institutionalized education and the fewest state apparatuses. Victor comes very close to creating a female monster; once he created a she-creature, presumably the monster would have run off to these uncivilized corners of the world, yet Victor cannot bring himself to do this. Althusser states “’ideas’ of a human subject exist in his actions’” (1354). In Victor’s case, his ideology is represented through inaction in first his refusal to create a monster and eventual through the action of destroying the monster. How has Victor been inculcated to the ideology of the State?

Gyorgy Lukacs emphasizes the importance of history as an important measure of human progress. If history allows for man to progress and evolve, and to be self aware – history provides “concrete possibilities for men to comprehend their own existence” (914) – how does a lack of history inhibit personal progress? For example, Frankenstein’s monster is overly concerned with his lack of connection to humanity, his lack of history and his otherness—is his interest in a mate an interest in forming a necessary history to progress?