This deep dive covers Stage 2: COMPLICITY — Who Bears Responsibility for the Murders? (Chapters 10–20) within Theme: Responsibility & Abandonment for GCSE English Literature. Revise Theme: Responsibility & Abandonment in Frankenstein for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 3 of 15 in this topic. Use this deep dive to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🔬 Stage 2: COMPLICITY — Who Bears Responsibility for the Murders? (Chapters 10–20)
Shelley refuses to answer the novel's central moral question simply. When the Creature confronts Victor on Mont Blanc in Chapter 10, he makes the case for his own innocence: "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous." This is the Romantic argument — that the self is shaped by environment and relationship. The Creature did not choose his own nature; Victor and society formed it through rejection.
Victor's counter-position is implicit: the Creature chose to murder; no external circumstance compels an act of violence. Victor holds the Creature responsible for his own actions while refusing to acknowledge that his own silence — his refusal to testify at Justine's trial — made him complicit in her execution.
Shelley presents both positions with equal weight and resolves neither. She further deepens Victor's guilt in Chapter 20, when he destroys the half-built female Creature — a second act of abandonment, denying the Creature the one companion who might have interrupted the cycle of violence. Shelley structures these two betrayals symmetrically to show that Victor's irresponsibility is a pattern, not a single lapse.
Quick Check: Why does Shelley give the Creature the most compelling argument in the Mont Blanc confrontation scene — more persuasive than Victor's counter-position?
Shelley positions the Creature as the novel's moral voice at this moment — articulate, logical, and rooted in Romantic philosophy about the formative power of environment. Victor, by contrast, can only flee or rage. By making the Creature's argument more persuasive than Victor's, Shelley implicates the reader: we feel the justice of the Creature's case. This is her mechanism for making moral responsibility a live, uncomfortable question rather than a settled verdict — which is the novel's greatest intellectual achievement.
Practice questions for Theme: Responsibility & Abandonment
In the Creature's final speech (Chapter 24), which word does the Creature use to describe himself as something cast off and unwanted — connecting his state directly to Victor's act of abandonment?
How does Shelley present the act of abandonment in Chapter 5 of Frankenstein? Write about the technique she uses and its effect on the reader.