Victor Frankenstein
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Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. He is the son of Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort, 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. He 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 at the university of Ingolstadt, becomes obsessed with the idea of creating life in inanimate matter through artificial means. Assembling a humanoid,creature not by stitching together pieces of human corpses, but by the use of a chemical apparatus, 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 begins a course of vengeance that results in the deaths of several of his family and friends. Frankenstein pursues the "fiend" (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 that has picked him up, he dies of sickness brought on by stress, grief, and exposure to the elements. His creature, upon discovering the death of its maker, is overcome by sorrow and remorse and ends the novel by vowing to commit suicide.
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." Some have even interpreted the character as a metaphor for God himself, with his monstrous creature representing humankind. He has also been interpreted, particularly by feminist scholars and many modern readers, as simply a bad parent. Yet, in the novel, he was a pure student, who never achieved the status of "Doctor", or anywhere close to it.
Frankenstein is also veiwed as a sort of Mother figure typical of the female gothic novels of the tme. Frankenstein thwarts death not by prolonging his life but by 'giving birth' to a new one.
