Frankenstein’s Elisabeth

16 May 2015

The question of the self and identity may be more important in ethics than it is in metaphysics, because without personhood and ‘the other’, there can be NO ethics at all.

That is why the ‘reconstructed’ Elisabeth (the one that Frankenstein revives out of love) kills herself – not because she realizes that she is ugly, but because she understands that she is not herself anymore. He made her out of and into somebody else, she has lost her identity.

And he did that for himself – not for her. Altruism has no place in Frankenstein, no matter how much we relate to the character. He ends up more lonely than he started because, not only he becomes a person, he also grows into a selfish one.