The Creature's Story
The Creature’s Voice
In the central chapters of Frankenstein, the Creature tells its own story. This is the innermost layer of the novel’s frame narrative: the Creature speaks to Victor, who relays it to Walton, who writes it down in letters. By giving the Creature a voice, Shelley forces the reader to see the world through its eyes. The Creature is articulate, sensitive, and self-aware. It did not choose to be created, and it did not choose to be hideous. Shelley’s great achievement is making the reader sympathise with a being that has been described, up to this point, as a “monster.”
The Creature describes its earliest experiences: confusion, sensory overload, cold, hunger, and fear. It is a tabula rasa — a blank slate. It knows nothing about the world, language, or human society. Every reaction it receives from humans is one of terror and violence. People scream, throw stones, and flee at the sight of it. The Creature learns very quickly that its appearance provokes horror, despite having done nothing wrong.
The Creature is born innocent. It experiences the world as a blank slate and learns only through observation and experience. Every human reaction to it is one of fear, violence, or rejection. Shelley uses the Creature’s narrative to argue that nurture, not nature, shapes character — the Creature becomes violent because the world makes it so.
The De Lacey Family
The Creature’s education begins when it discovers a small cottage in the woods inhabited by the De Lacey family: Felix, Agatha, and their blind father. The Creature hides in a hovel attached to their cottage and watches them through a crack in the wall. It observes their poverty, their kindness to one another, and their grief. The De Laceys are exiles — a once-wealthy French family who lost everything because Felix helped a Turkish merchant escape an unjust death sentence. They have been punished for doing the right thing.
Shelley uses the De Laceys to explore the theme of social exclusion. The family is kind, loving, and moral, yet society has cast them out. The Creature feels a deep bond with them because it too has been rejected. It secretly helps them by gathering firewood at night. When the Creature describes the family’s happiness, its own loneliness becomes even more painful. It watches love, warmth, and belonging through a gap in the wall — close enough to see, but never able to participate.
The Creature learns to speak by listening to Felix teach French to Safie, a young Turkish woman who arrives at the cottage. It also finds a leather bag containing three books: Paradise Lost by John Milton, Plutarch’s Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. These texts profoundly shape the Creature’s understanding of the world.
Paradise Lost has the greatest impact. The Creature identifies with both Adam and Satan. It tells Victor: “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” This is one of the novel’s most important quotations. “I ought to be thy Adam” expresses the Creature’s sense of what it deserves — love, guidance, a place in the world. “But I am rather the fallen angel” acknowledges that it has been cast out, like Satan from Heaven. Crucially, it adds “for no misdeed” — the Creature has done nothing wrong. Its punishment is undeserved.
Rejection by the De Laceys
After months of observation and secret kindness, the Creature decides to reveal itself to the De Lacey family. It chooses to approach the blind father first, reasoning that a man who cannot see its appearance might judge it by its words alone. The conversation begins well: old De Lacey listens kindly, offers sympathy, and promises to help. For a brief moment, the Creature experiences acceptance.
Then Felix, Agatha, and Safie return. Felix tears the Creature away from his father and beats it with a stick. Agatha faints. Safie flees. The Creature does not fight back — it could easily overpower Felix, but it chooses restraint. Shelley makes the reader’s sympathy unmistakable: the Creature approaches with hope, speaks eloquently, and is met with violence. The De Laceys, who are themselves victims of injustice, cannot see past the Creature’s appearance. Even the best of humanity rejects the Creature.
The De Lacey rejection is the novel’s emotional turning point. The Creature approaches with hope, is briefly accepted by the blind father, then is violently driven out by Felix. After this, the Creature declares: “I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me.” The rejection transforms it from a being seeking love into one consumed by rage. Shelley shows that society’s cruelty, not the Creature’s nature, creates the monster.
“I Am Malicious Because I Am Miserable”
The Creature’s most powerful statement comes during its confrontation with Victor on the Mer de Glace: “I am malicious because I am miserable.” This six-word sentence is the heart of the novel’s argument about nature versus nurture. The Creature is not born evil. It becomes “malicious” — deliberately cruel — because it is “miserable” — wretched and hopeless. Shelley reverses the expected Gothic formula: the “monster” is not the source of evil but its victim.
The Creature continues: “Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” and “Shall I respect man when he condemns me?” These rhetorical questions force Victor — and the reader — to confront the injustice of the Creature’s situation. It asks only for what every human being has: companionship, acceptance, and love. Denied all three, it turns to violence not because it is inherently evil but because society has left it no other option.
The Creature’s identification with Milton’s characters is central to the novel. Adam was created by God, loved, given a companion (Eve), and placed in Paradise. The Creature sees itself as a failed Adam — created but unloved, given no companion, and cast out. Satan, by contrast, was once an angel who rebelled against God and was thrown into Hell. The Creature identifies with Satan’s sense of injustice: “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” The word “drivest” places the blame on Victor — it is the creator who has cast the Creature out, just as God cast out Satan. But unlike Satan, the Creature insists it has committed “no misdeed.”
Later, the Creature echoes Satan’s famous declaration in Paradise Lost: “Evil, be thou my good.” The Creature embraces its role as avenger, not because it wants to be evil, but because goodness has brought it nothing but pain. Shelley asks whether a being driven to evil by universal rejection can truly be held responsible for its actions.