Sybmolism in Black Swan: from White to Dark

In today’s society, there have been many written works that have the ideals of utopia and a sense of happiness but during the times of when the French Revolution came along, there was a lot more conflict and more violence. This sense of conflict is evident in the book of Frankenstein. In the novel, there are many social issues such as poverty and that was evident in the book was their different personalities. Victor is seen to be more simple in life while the monster is more ambitious. Due to this, Victor ends up neglectful of the monster and the monster’s innocence turned into violence since he is misunderstood by everyone. It is considered to be a metaphor to the French Revolution because of how the social classes were vastly divided during the revolution.

During the French Revolution, it was known that many citizens were living in poverty and that was due to the fact that only a certain class was considered to be the ones who are successful in contributing to society during that time. A man named Emmanuel Sieyes had been very vocal during the revolution and wrote about the Third Estate and what it exactly entailed. The third estate is a classic example to show that no other class but the “fourth” is able to be wealthy enough to live their daily lives. Sieye has stated in his excerpt, “This fourth class includes the most distinguished scientific and liberal professions to the least esteemed domestic services.. Such are the labors which sustain society”. This can be compared to Frankenstein because of the monster’s appearance. Many citizens are not used to seeing such wild creatures and when they saw the monster, they immediately got scared and did not count him as someone trying to live a life only because of his physical appearance. This is seen in this quote where the monster states, “I had hardly placed my food within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones I escaped and took refuge in a low hovel”. These citizens have never seen such a creation before and they are fearful of the monster. The book had represented poverty as well when the monster saw how scarce the food was and this was shown in this quote, “Their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables and their milk of one cow gave very little during the winter when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it”. This shows how the monster saw the family suffer for food shortages and it represents when the peasants in France suffered from poverty. There was nothing changing when it came to their government and everything stayed the same so they lived in poverty each day.

Continuing on, Victor does not seem to have any specific type of worry in the world as he is accepted into society because he is a human being. He is well educated considering he went to college and he knows how to read and speak. He is privileged in the sense that he is a human and that he is educated. However, for the monster, it was not the same case and this can be seen in Sieye’s excerpt again when he says, “If the privileged classes have succeeded in usurping all the lucrative and honorary positions, it is both an odious injustice to the majority of citizens and a treason to commonwealth”. Sieyes is talking about while the classes like the third and fourth have been fortunate enough to not worry about any financial issues, it is not fair to the rest of the citizens who are called the commonwealth to be suffering when they are working. During the times of the revolution, there were a large majority of the French population to be working class and the monster trying to fit into society is a representation of this quote, “A few months before my arrival in Paris, the family had friends and possessed every enjoyment of virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste could afford”. It depicts that he is someone who is an outsider with no type of wealth and is trying to earn his privileged spot in the society that they lived in during the time. During this time, it represented how the middle class was growing and how the monster wants to be a part of that but cannot.

Additionally, the French Revolution was also a time of violence due to the issue of trying to achieve equality not working out and Sieyes has implied this in this excerpt saying, “What accord can be anticipated between the energy of the oppressed and the rage of the oppressors?”. He is talking about how some citizens will no longer tolerate the fact that the working class is in poverty for the same type of life they want to live as wealthy people and that they are provoking violence. This is again a metaphor for the book of Frankenstein because the monster wanted revenge on his creator named Victor because Victor did not want anything to do with the monster. He essentially wanted to be freed of the guilt that him thinking it was a good idea to build a monster to advance himself in society. The monster becomes aghast by the fact that Victor would want to create another monster and decides to show up on his wedding night. Before the wedding night, Victor gets the devastating news that his best friend Henry was killed and that the monster had murdered him. Furthermore, as the wedding night gets closer, Elizabeth begins to wonder if Victor truly loves her and if he was cheating on her. The wedding night had finally came and little to Victor’s knowledge, it was Elizabeth that the monster was trying to kill and not him. This quote represents the death of Elizabeth; “I discovered no trace of him when suddenly I heard a shrill and a dreadful scream… She was there lifeless and inanimate thrown across the bed and her head hanging down”. The monster’s violence represents the violence and bloodshed of the French Revolution and it was a sort of a clash between classes and for classes, it was between Victor and the monster.

Overall, the French Revolution marked a time when the population was miserable due to the fact that there was such a vast number of issues, the main one being unequal due to the social classes. It was also a bad time because they had limited constitutional monarchy and it was a time of when violence was being provoked. In the book of Frankenstein, it was a metaphor of the French Revolution as mentioned earlier because Victor was always miserable due to the monster trying to fit into society and coming back to him when it needed help. Victor’s life ended up to what the revolution was doing and that was essentially the monster provoking violence and murder to the people he cared about dearly and never getting his true happy ending of his life. The idea of violence had ultimately lead to the advancement of the French Revolution but it also caused misery for Victor since the monster had killed two of his loved ones.  

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