The question of whether the creature is inherently monstrous or made monstrous by his treatment is one of the most frequently assigned essay topics for Frankenstein, largely because the novel gives genuine evidence on both sides of the debate. Grading these essays well requires a rubric that resists an easy, one-sided answer.

Many students arrive at this essay already having decided the answer, usually that the creature's violence is entirely a product of society's rejection, before they have fully engaged with the text's more complicated moments, such as the creature's own admission of feeling something like malice or his deliberate targeting of Victor's loved ones.

A rubric that rewards essays for acknowledging this complexity, rather than flattening the novel into a simple parable about nurture overriding nature, pushes students toward the more sophisticated reading Shelley actually constructs, one in which nature and nurture are difficult to fully separate.

This is also an essay type where evidence selection matters enormously. Students arguing purely for nurture often cite the creature's early observations of the De Lacey family and his growing capacity for empathy, while overlooking his later choices once that capacity for connection is repeatedly denied to him.

What a Sophisticated Nature vs. Nurture Essay Looks Like

The strongest essays on this topic tend to argue that the novel deliberately resists a clean answer, using the creature's own eloquent self-awareness as evidence that his capacity for both connection and violence coexist, shaped by but not entirely reducible to his treatment by others.

• Evidence drawn from both the creature's early development and his later choices
• Acknowledgment of the novel's resistance to a fully one-sided answer
• Analysis of specific moments where nature and nurture seem to interact rather than compete
• Consideration of Victor's own nature and nurture as a parallel or contrast
• A thesis that takes a position while still engaging with counter-evidence

Avoiding the One-Sided Essay Trap

It is tempting to give full marks to any well-written essay arguing purely for nurture, since that reading aligns with a sympathetic view of the creature that many students and teachers share. But a rubric should hold this essay to the same standard as any other argumentative essay: does it engage with the strongest available counter-evidence, or does it simply ignore it.

An essay that never addresses the creature's own troubling admissions about his capacity for violence, choosing to focus only on his sympathetic backstory, has left significant textual evidence unaddressed, regardless of how persuasively the rest of the essay is written.

Connecting This Theme to Victor's Own Development

Stronger essays often extend the nature versus nurture question to Victor himself, asking whether his own obsessive ambition is innate or shaped by his upbringing and education. Rewarding this kind of extension in a rubric encourages students to see the theme as running throughout the novel rather than being confined to the creature's story alone.

This connection also tends to produce more original essays, since most students default to discussing the creature exclusively and rarely think to apply the same analytical lens to Victor unless specifically prompted or rewarded for doing so.

Grading for Nuance Without Penalizing a Clear Position

None of this means an essay needs to land on a fence-sitting, both-sides conclusion to earn a strong score. A student can and should take a clear position, but the strongest essays reach that position after genuinely grappling with the evidence on both sides, rather than by ignoring inconvenient details from the outset.

Making this distinction clear in the rubric, and in class discussion before the essay is assigned, helps students understand that nuance and a confident thesis are not in tension with one another.