Such were the professor’s words- rather let me say  such the words of fate- enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein, –more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

This passage from Victor Frankenstein in chapter 3 is a deep dive into his psyche and how he can be seen as a truly monstrous character. In this passage Victor recognizes that what he has learned and wants to explore into doing will end up destroying him, making him mad crazy you could say. His devotion to becoming an important figure bent on the pursuit of money, fame and power leads to his failure as a husband, brother, son and “father”, he just doesn’t know it yet. Victor is starting to become a monster, his internal monstrosity is shown through this passage as he is so bent on doing horrible things in the name of science and advancement that he loses his humanity and fails to see that the creature was never the monster. Victor is the monster when he decided to play god and create something that was never meant to be and even after he did he chose not to care for or build up his creation. As Six and Thompson made the comparison between internal and external monsters, how many outwardly physically atrocious beings are obviously monstrous but the ones that hide deep inside a person’s psyche and are never exposed to the real world can be much more dangerous because we never see it coming. Victor’s own internal monstrosity lead to the destruction of many and was his own ultimate demise.

Can societal impacts lead to the internal( Victor) and external (The Creature) monstrosity with Frankenstein? How are people in that time affected by the thoughts of power leading to infamy in the history books? Was alchemy ever really practiced by scientist during the 18th century?