Judge`s Wife By Allende Essays - Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein

Judge`s Wife By Allende In "The Judge's Wife" the author, Isabel Allende, uses a variety of techniques to make full use of the limited space within her short story. By using strong imagery, providing a background, providing believable human actions, and examining justice, M. Allende creates a piece readers can understand to the point of empathy. Because her short story examines human behavior in respect to passions, justice, and emotion (love) in a plausible manner one can find close similarities between her work and that of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. The author makes use of imagery to embellish not only upon her environment, but also her characters. M. Allende presents the ideas of corruption, innocence, and strictness simply through well-selected adjectives that lend eloquently to the descriptions of her characters. The strait laced judge being "...dressed formally in black ... and his boots always shone with bees wax " (Allende, 422). One can infer by details such as those that that particular individual appreciates formality, and considering his desert location, a strict adherence to it. The author also uses images of deformity demonstrate the corruption of her main character, Nicholas Vidal; by providing him with four (4) nipples and a scared face the reader can have a visual representation of the character's tragic formation. In much the same manner, one can see such development within Frankenstein's creation. The monster's grotesque outward appearance reflects his corrupted creation. Using such imagery the author allows the readers to form a solid conception of the plight of their characters. Mary Shelly uses lovely poetic imagery in much the same way to define, and give three-dimensional presence to her characters. Such use of imagery for the purpose of character definition can most clearly be seen in her description of her monster: "His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful, Great GOD! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowering; his teeth pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dunwhite sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and strait black lips." (Shelly, 56) In viewing the above passage, much of the same type of character definition can be seen; very similar to the manner in which Allende casts her deformed mold of her creature, Nicholas. Beyond merely presenting imagery to enhance the characters, the Allende also supplies background information in order to enhance the readers understanding of how the main character arrived at his current state. The author focuses on the main character's fatherless and loveless conception in order to accentuate how his development occurred. In a similar fashion Allende's character Nicholas Vidal was conceived in a similar fashion as Frankenstein's monster. Both are created and ultimately rejected by their creators who attempt to destroy them. These horrid monsters are invariably unwanted by their creators, thus their creators go to great lengths to attempt to snuff out the lives of the creations in order that they not wreak havoc upon the world. Both authors using this particular method of rejection to temper the souls of their monsters to the hardness of iron (Allende, 423). In each case this extreme form of temperament creates an almost supernatural being, filled with great destructive forces. Further extending upon the parallel roles of Nicholas and the Monster, a clear outcasting from society also aids in their murderous temperament. Each character finds himself rejected by society. The monster, from Frankenstein, is rejected by the family he assists solely due to his grotesque appearance. In much the same way Nicholas is assumed early on in his life by "decent folk" to become a criminal due to the telling marks on his face. It may well be said that though the Judge, in his strait laced figure, may not have directly created Nicholas, yet in reality he probably did in deed, like the rest of society, stereotyped and eventually outcast Nicholas based solely upon the scars on his face. In each case the author makes use of societies tendency to categorize and reject an individual based solely on their exterior shells, rather than probing the unique individual. To solely focus upon the main character within this story would be folly when making a true comparison to Frankenstein. Indeed the role of the judge has many overlapping qualities with Victor Frankenstein. Each man peruses, as both texts put it, their own "creature", to the points of virtual insanity. In doing