The Cost of Creation: Ambition and Trauma in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein

Abstract

Ambition and trauma have existed intertwined with the human condition, driving both discovery and destruction across literature. These drives converge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in a Gothic framework that delves into the psychological cost of creation, rejection, and loss. Victor Frankenstein's one-track pursuit of knowledge and scientific renown acts as proof of the human search for transcendence, but also for its inability to withstand the emotional cost of overextension. Shelley's tale spins not only a tale of scientific horror but a deeply psychological exploration of loss, identity, and collapse. The Creature, created through ambition and cast out into tragedy, is a figure for the darker consequences of abandonment and unmet emotional needs. Through close reading method and applying psychoanalytic theory, object relations theory, and trauma theory, this research analyzes the reflected collapse of Victor and his Creature to assess how unhealed emotional trauma manifests as vengeance, repression, and psychological disintegration, making the purpose of this work is to study Frankenstein not just as a warning of scientific hubris, but as a profound investigation of ambition, trauma, and the psyche's vulnerable response to loss. In exploring their shared lapses of emotional resilience and cure, the research offers a literary case study of psychological pain within gothic literature.