Within the pain and suffering of his own perspective, the Creature's patience, goodwill and sensitivity seem to outstrip and justify his violence. The human species and his egocentric creator treated him horribly. The power of his rhetoric resounds in the convincing alliteration yet there is something wrong with his logic. Being in a state of misery does not necessitate miserable behaviour.

It is a criminal platform which declares that upbringing, societal pressure, and heinous abuse lead to evil behaviour. Murder, theft and rape, according to this view, are inescapably the result of extraneous factors, not personal choice.

Robert Walton, Frankenstein's seafaring narrator, after listening and nearly believing the Monster, saw through his verbiage

I was at first touched by the expression of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend (the dead Victor), indignation was rekindled within me.

Had the Monster been transformed by the values of Enlightenment education would he have acted so brutally, leaving a trail of devastation? The criterion for criticism of the Monster is neither aesthetic, nor moral, but behavioral. He is a monster of the most heinous kind - a sensitive and intelligent killer. This value judgement has nothing to do with the physical or metaphysical gap between the Creature and humanity; there are many of his ilk in our species.

The Monster's self-justification is part and parcel with the Romantic philosophy that Mary Shelley critiqued in her novel. Unlike the Enlightenment credo, "I think therefore I am," the Monster's creed could have been the plaintive cry: " I suffer, therefore I am." Self knowledge, especially knowledge of his absolute difference from others, escalated his suffering. Mary was surrounded by self-aware and creative monster-like men, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Not unlike the Creature, they viewed themselves victims of humanity's injustice. Preoccupied with their personal suffering they disregarded the feelings and rights of those nearest them, especially their children. Only months before the initial writing of Frankenstein, Byron had been accused publicly of abandoning his wife Annabella and their child Augusta Ada. Months after the Summer of 1816, Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet, took her own life at the Serpentine River, partially because of the dire circumstance she was in due to Percy's culpable negligence. Percy's children, Ianthe and Charles, became wards of the state whom he never attempted to communicate with or provide for, even though he fought for his personal rights of custody.

Despite their first relational failures, Shelley and Byron became negligent fathers whose children's deaths were partially due to their parental indifference. Clara Shelley died due to Percy's parental neglect. He insisted Mary and the infant travel by vetturino, a slow covered wagon hired by several travellers to the same destination. Despite Clara's ill health, the trip was undertaken in the hottest Italian weather. She died dehydrated, thin and weak, midway at Venice. Mary blamed Percy for her death and went on to write a novel of suicide, Matilda, whose protagonist was a father-abandoned girl. Percy thought that he was being punished for his earlier sins of neglect, perhaps by the ghost of Harriet. He wrote: "Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet/ there are ghosts that may take revenge for it." Notwithstanding the death of his children, the Promethean spirit lived on in Percy who finished his magnificent poem, Prometheus Unbound, at the height of his family's crisis.

William died of worms (gasto-enteritis) in Rome. The doctor had advised that William be moved to a cooler climate but because of their social interactions the Shelleys remained in the torrid climate too long. Elana, a mystery child perhaps born by Clare or a maid servant, died after entering a Naples home for foundlings where Shelley had deposited her. At Elana's baptism, Mary was declared the mother but it was more likely that Clare, Mary's step-sister, was the actual parent. Because of Mary's jealousy and her intention not to have Clare a permanent fixture in the family, the child was given up. Many of these events took place after the initial draft of Frankenstein in 1816 yet it is prophetically ironic that parentless children and selfish adults play a perpetual role in Mary's life.

The fruit of the romantic life they led was death, and sadly, the death of the innocent. Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Victor Frankenstein shared the same goal of creating a new humanity, aesthetically more aware and superior to the natural version and without its limitations. In the end, their children died along with the idealistic goal of renovating humanity. Victor's creation dies but only after expressing his victimized rage on his maker and his kind. Though aesthetically attuned, the Creature was like his creator - less than human in his actions and behaviour.

While Robert Walton condemned the Monster as a trickster and a fiend, he fell for the angel-like persona of Victor. Victor was not externally hideous. He was an eloquent and cultured European gentleman. Walton describes him:

My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise, his mind is so cultivated, as when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.

Victor's appearance is as illusive as that of this monster. What is an angelic being doing keeping silent as an innocent girl dies? Do angels keep vital information from those whose lives are at risk (Clerval and Elizabeth) if they are kept in ignorance? Only one angel in tradition acts autonomously, arrogantly and outside of community - Lucifer, the arch fiend of Judeo-Christian tradition.

Victor is no saintly scientist in his attempt to dodge responsibility for his creation. Never learning self-criticism, Victor believes that the Monster is an ill-fortuned mistake and not a reflection of his own character or misjudgment. Confirming his lack of reflection, he dies saying: "During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blameable...." The creator shares the same rhetorical eloquence as his creature. In relinquishing responsibility for their personal choices monster and man become monsters at the margin.