The Separation Of Opium In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In Jasper’s case opium represents the exact opposite, it is the agent of his madness, it doesn’t stop it but it enhances it. He uses opium as a means to summon into his mind the act of murder. Even before he actually kills Edwin he imagines doing it while under the influence of opium. After the killing is done, Jasper visits opium den and there he relives it again. For Jasper opium is not a means to oblivion, but the vehicle to remembrance, it triggers his memory and enhances his senses. It brings out the monster and removes the mask of normality from Jasper’s face. In the twenty-third chapter, before Princess Puffer engages Jasper in a conversation from which we learn about the effects that opium has on him, she hands him a pipe filled with the drug:
According to Foucault “starting in the nineteenth century, […] monstrosity is systematically suspected of being behind all criminality. Every criminal could well be a monster (Foucault, Abnormal
The proof of the complete separation between the monster-entity and the human-entity is indicated by the fact that Jasper does not remember killing Edwin but the monster does. By creating the monster and attributing him Jasper’s vices Dickens plays with erroneous beliefs of the time based on Darwin’s theory of evolution. His monster is not created from cadavers like Dr. Frankenstein’s one, it is not created by a special concoction like Mr. Hyde nor did it need to die to complete the transformation, like the vampires, Dickens’s monster is created from repressed feelings and frustrations by the norms imposed by the society, it is a product of the strict code of values and passionate desire. Dickens did not want to close his eyes to the problems of the Victorian way of living. He was