Key Quote
“"Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?"”
The Creature · Chapter 13
Focus: “blot”
The Creature's anguished question — Am I really a monster? — reveals the devastating psychological impact of universal rejection: he begins to internalise society's perception of him.
Technique 1 — RHETORICAL QUESTION / SELF-INTERROGATION
The rhetorical question is directed inward — the Creature interrogates himself, conducting a painful self-examination. The question form suggests uncertainty: unlike those around him, the Creature does NOT know whether he is a monster. This uncertainty is itself profoundly humanising — monsters do not question their nature; only humans agonise over identity. The very act of asking proves he is not what society calls him.
The metaphor 'a blot upon the earth' equates the Creature with a mistake — an inkblot, an error on an otherwise clean page. This dehumanising metaphor reduces a conscious being to a stain. The Creature has absorbed society's language about him and turned it against himself — an act of internalised oppression (accepting and applying the negative judgements of others to oneself).
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
The Creature regresses from confident self-knowledge (his earlier narration demonstrates intelligence and emotional depth) to self-doubt under the pressure of universal rejection. This psychological regression — from self-acceptance to self-hatred — is the novel's most disturbing process: Shelley shows how sustained social rejection can destroy a person's sense of their own worth.
Key Words
Technique 2 — UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIERS — 'ALL MEN'
The repeated 'all men' — 'all men fled,' 'all men disowned' — establishes the totality of rejection. This universal quantifier (a word indicating that something applies to every case) leaves no exceptions: not SOME people but ALL people. The Creature's isolation is absolute — there is no single person in the world who accepts him. Shelley makes the exclusion total to demonstrate that the Creature's subsequent violence is not a response to individual cruelty but to systemic, universal rejection.
The verbs 'fled' and 'disowned' represent escalating rejection: people first run from the Creature (physical avoidance) and then deny any connection to him (social erasure). Fleeing is instinctive; disowning is deliberate. The progression from instinct to decision shows that the Creature's exclusion is reinforced at every level — visceral, intellectual, and institutional.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
PHYSIOGNOMY
The pseudo-science of physiognomy — reading character from facial features — was widely accepted in Shelley's era. The Creature is judged monstrous entirely on appearance; no one pauses to assess his character, intelligence, or morality. Shelley critiques a society that judges worth by surface rather than substance.
THE OUTSIDER
Romantic literature was fascinated by the outsider figure — the gifted individual excluded from society (Byron's heroes, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner). The Creature is the ultimate Romantic outsider: more eloquent, sensitive, and self-aware than those who reject him, yet permanently excluded by appearance alone.
Key Words
WOW — THE LOOKING-GLASS SELF (Cooley / Du Bois)
Charles Horton Cooley's looking-glass self theory argues that our self-concept is formed by how we imagine others see us: we are mirrors reflecting the social gaze. The Creature's question — 'Was I a monster?' — demonstrates this process: he begins to see himself AS society sees him. W.E.B. Du Bois's related concept of double consciousness — 'always looking at one's self through the eyes of others' — adds a racial dimension: marginalised groups are forced to view themselves through the hostile gaze of the dominant culture. The Creature experiences double consciousness: he knows himself to be intelligent, sensitive, and capable of love, yet he is also aware that the world sees him as a monster. These two truths coexist in devastating tension. Shelley dramatises how social perception can become self-perception — how being CALLED a monster is the first step toward BECOMING one.
Key Words