Tenets Of Marxism In Frankenstein

Frankenstein, the seminal work of romantic creative Mary Shelley, is typically considered a simple horror story, but in actuality, it serves as much more. From the first pages of the novel, Mary Shelley presents ideas on social class. The work begins with the Frankensteins, an affluent family, calling a group of poor colored children vagrants and the lone white child an angel (Shelley 30). References to social class continue and shape the entire journey. Throughout the novel, Mary Shelley reflects Marxist ideas on social class by weaving a cautionary tale of the dangers of wealth and power, and their eventual disaster. In order to recognize how Shelley contrived Marxist ideas in her novel, it is essential to understand the tenets of Marxism.
The Social Contract Theory explains a romantic perspective on the origin of social class and oppression, “... the invention of private property, which constituted the pivotal moment in humanity's evolution out of a simple, pure state into one characterized by greed, competition, vanity, inequality, and vice” (2c). Out of this competition, the social classes were formed and the bourgeois formed by seizing the means of production and subjugating the proletariat. Marx discloses that such oppression has always been present when there have been social classes. “Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes” (Marx and Engels 20). Oppression of the monster is apparent. The monster is consistently attacked, berated, and rejected. When discussing such attacks the monster gives its account, “I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons,” (Shelley 105). Without reason, the monster is assaulted wherever it goes. The monster describes an encounter with another human, “Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick” (Shelley 134). Just as “the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them,” the bourgeois seek to ravage the proletariat (Rousseau 2). This oppression begins to strip the proletariat of anything they previously held, they lose everything. Shelley makes the monster in complete misery and isolation to showcase this idea, “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated,