¶ … Abandonment in Shelley's Frankenstein and Bronte's Jane Eyre: a Comparison Abandonment is a substantial theme in literature written by women. It appears in the poems of Emily Dickinson, in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and in the novels of the Bronte sisters -- Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It is not a theme that is only addressed by women in literature, to be sure, but it is one that seems to be utilized most evocatively by them. This paper will provide a comparative analysis of two literary sources -- Shelley's Frankenstein and Bronte's Jane Eyre -- to show how abandonment can cause depression, deep emotions and despair, but how it can also open up new doors for an individual; it will show how unprofitable it can be and yet how beneficial to one's life it can also prove in the long run.

Jane Eyre is a romantic-gothic novel by Charlotte Bronte about an orphan named Jane who is raised by an unloving guardian and treated cruelly by her cousins. The novel begins with an exploration of the abandonment that Jane feels as she is basically unloved at a tender age. She retreats into the world of books and disappears into them, longing for moments of solitude so she can escape the oppressive environment in which she finds herself. Her aunt and cousins treat her so abominably that she feels completely abandoned by the world and her only comfort is to read something that can take her imagination away from what she suffers.

Her sufferings are not lessened when she is sent to a boarding school, because the school is very inefficient and is not a happy place. However, Jane meets a friend there who teaches her how to transcend her environment by thinking on the goodness of God and the meaning of the Christian teachings. Her friend represents what Jane lacks inside herself, which is essentially grace and life in the soul. Jane has a lot of creativity and potential, but she is bitter about her state in life and her abandonment; she does not feel love for anyone -- although she does feel love for her friend because her friend shows her love and kindness too. Her friend teaches her through example of how to accept injustice patiently because it is what Our Savior did when He accepted His cross. This is the spiritual dimension or seed that is planted in Jane and it was teaches her to cope with abandonment and how to grow from it. Damon Linker of The Week writes that "God shows his love not by helping you avoid suffering, but by sending you suffering" because through suffering one grows to be what God wants one to be -- a better person. This is the essence of the Christian ethos that Jane's friend teaches her at her boarding school, and it is a lesson that takes root inside Jane and that helps her through a particularly difficult time later in her life.

In Shelley's Frankenstein, however, there is no such lesson for the monster, because he feels abandoned in the same way that Milton's Satan felt cast off by God in Paradise Lost. There is a loss of spiritual faith on the monster's part -- in part because he is a monster whose creator (Dr. Frankenstein) had dubious aims in bringing him to life in the first place. The theme of abandonment is actually addressed in a two-fold manner in the gothic novel by Shelley. First, there is Dr. Frankenstein who has abandoned the Old World spiritual values of his fathers in pursuit of Enlightenment science; second, there is the monster who feels abandoned and scorned by mankind for being a freak of nature: he questions whether or not he has a soul, kills out of revenge, and is stalked by his creator into the icy, cold wilderness of the arctic, where he disappears from all humanity completely and finally. It is a novel about how abandonment by one's father or the feeling of abandonment by God that one can feel can lead to despair.

Thus, on a spiritual plane, these two novels show two completely different and contrasting views of abandonment. Jane Eyre shows how abandonment can bring one nearer to God and nearer to one's perfect self. Frankenstein shows how abandonment can lead to misery, abjectness, depression and...

Of course, Jane feels all of those same emotions in her journey, too. Her feeling of abandonment comes out of the same place -- the same lack of love that she feels and the same separation from humanity that she experiences later in the novel when she flees Mr. Rochester and becomes a beggar in a part of the country that she does not know. But God does not abandon her as Jane has shown herself to be faithful to Him but fleeing Mr. Rochester and the unlawful and unholy union that he has asked her to enter into with him. She refused to soil her conscience and violate God's laws by entering into such a relationship with Mr. Rochester and so she flees his house -- and while she suffers for many days as a result (for she actually loves Mr. Rochester -- which makes it all the harder to bear), God does not abandon her: he sends her friends to find her and take care of her.
In Frankenstein, on the other hand, the monster feels abandoned by God. The monster finds a friend in an old blind man who is also a cast-off in a shack in the woods. He learns what it means to be a human by watching and imitating the actions of the blind man and the others who live there. He wants to be part of their society. He feels love within himself and kinship with them. He reads the books that he finds and learns about what it means to be a human being. He calls this his "birth" and it is actually similar to Jane's early childhood -- the learning from books (there is something about books themselves that call to the abandoned -- they are like gateways that only persons in solitude can enter through). But when the monster finally escapes his shell and tries to befriend the people, only the blind man accepts him (because he cannot see and does not judge). But Felix is shocked by the monster and throws him to the ground and beats him to drive him away. It is a very sad scene because the monster takes it so badly -- he is heart-broken and feels like his chance at having a connection with humanity has been lost. He never really recovers from this moment. He recalls Milton's Paradise Lost and states, "I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him" (Shelley 156). The monster basically feels like Lucifer after he is cast out of Paradise. He does not know what he has done to deserve it and he holds ill will against God as a result. Thus, for the monster, abandonment leads to hostility, depression and very deep emotions that serve as an obstacle to his ever really having any human connections or society at all. For Jane, abandonment is also painful but she is able to overcome her abandonment in her youth and find beauty in one who suffers patiently (her friend at the boarding school).

For this reason, in her adulthood, Jane accepts abandonment in a more spiritual light. She also, at the same time gives a feeling of abandonment to Mr. Rochester. But in the context of the novel, this abandonment is actually a good thing -- and a necessary one, for Mr. Rochester has been nursing a sinful fantasy for himself with Jane, acting deceitfully about who and what he actually is. Her abandonment of him obliges him to accept the reality of his situation, to face it and to take responsibility for it. Thus, he does not pursue Jane. He sadly takes to his house and accepts the mad woman to whom he is already married as his own. It is a moment of maturation for Mr. Rochester and it is painful -- but it is absolutely necessary for his own spiritual growth. And, on top of this, Jane is pained by the fact that she is causing him to feel abandoned (because she loves him so much -- but she loves her God more and respects the duty she owes Him by following His laws). She nonetheless reflects on her human love for Mr. Rochester as she fears what he might do when he wakes to find her gone on the morning of her leaving his house: "Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment -- far worse than my abandonment -- how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it…