America

America is a recurring geographical and symbolic reference in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, invoked by characters who imagine it as a land of discovery, refuge, or colonial enterprise. The continent appears in several distinct contexts: as a destination for scientific ambition, as a refuge for the monster's proposed exile, as a site of historical tragedy, and as a theater for Henry Clerval's colonial aspirations. These varied references collectively position America as a space onto which characters project their hopes for renewal, their guilt, or their ambitions, while the novel simultaneously undercuts these projections by acknowledging the violence of European colonization.

Discovery and Colonial Ambition

The earliest reference to America occurs in Robert Walton's first letter to his sister Margaret Saville, where he imagines the polar regions as a land "surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe" and speculates about discovering "a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite." This passage explicitly links the Arctic voyage to the tradition of transatlantic exploration, with Walton envisioning himself as a discoverer who will confer "inestimable benefit... on all mankind, to the last generation." Later, during his journey through Germany with Victor Frankenstein, Henry Clerval reveals his own colonial ambitions: his "design was to visit India, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade." Clerval's plan, though focused on India, belongs to the same imperial framework that had already reshaped the Americas.

The Monster's Proposed Exile

The most sustained reference to America comes from the monster himself, who proposes to Victor Frankenstein that if a female companion is created for him, he will "go to the vast wilds of South America" and live there in permanent exile. He elaborates: "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food." This vision of South America as a prelapsarian wilderness where a pair of outcasts can live harmlessly echoes the pastoral ideal that the monster had observed among the De Laceys. Yet Victor immediately expresses skepticism: "You propose to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile?" Victor's doubt proves prescient, as he later fears that the monster and his mate might "quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species." The American wilderness thus functions as a contested space: the monster imagines it as a sanctuary where he might finally find peace, while Victor sees it as an insufficient solution to the deeper problem of the creature's loneliness.

Historical Violence and Moral Reflection

The novel also acknowledges the darker history of European contact with the Americas. During the monster's self-education through Volney's Ruins of Empires, he reads about "the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants." This moment of shared grief between the monster and Safie aligns the creature's own experience of rejection with the historical suffering of indigenous peoples. The reference to the destruction of native civilizations by European colonizers adds a moral dimension to the novel's critique of ambition and conquest. Similarly, in Victor's retrospective moralizing about the dangers of obsessive pursuit, he includes the conquest of the Americas as an example of the harm caused when "no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections": "America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed." This passage explicitly condemns the violence of colonization, framing it as a consequence of the same kind of unchecked ambition that drives Victor's own disastrous experiments.

America as a Contrast to Europe

America also appears as a point of comparison in the novel's reflections on political systems. The Turk, Safie's father, is condemned to death in Paris, and the narrator notes that "the injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation." This European injustice stands in implicit contrast to the republican ideals that Elizabeth Lavenza praises in Geneva, where "the republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it." America, as the most prominent republic of the era, hovers as an unspoken alternative model. Later, during Victor and Clerval's tour of England, they visit Oxford, where "the memory of that unfortunate king and his companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his queen, and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city." The reference to the English Civil War and the fate of Charles I evokes the political struggles that had led to the founding of American colonies, though the novel never makes this connection explicit.

Narrative Significance

America in Frankenstein is never a place the characters actually visit; it exists only as an imagined space, a projection of hopes and fears. For the monster, it represents the possibility of a life free from persecution; for Victor, it is a site of potential danger where his creation might propagate a "race of devils"; for Clerval, it is part of a larger colonial enterprise; for Walton, it is a destination linked to the heroic age of exploration. The novel's treatment of America thus reflects its broader themes: the tension between aspiration and consequence, the violence inherent in discovery and creation, and the impossibility of escaping one's own nature by simply changing location. The continent's actual history of colonization and indigenous suffering, briefly acknowledged through the monster's reading, serves as a moral counterweight to the characters' more romantic visions of the New World.