To Be Loved

I recently read Frankenstein for the first time, and I loved it in a way that I have loved very few books. There are so many scenes that affected me deeply. The following is one of my favorites. It is told from the creature's perspective and takes place while he is living in a hovel outside of a little cottage where a family lives. A small hole in the wall of his hovel provides a window into the cottage, and he spends his days watching the cottagers go about there lives. It is here that he receives his first glimpses of love and learns about the concept of family.

"The young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage, but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play, and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch! who had never beheld aught beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love. He played a sweet mournful air, which I perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her, and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear those emotions."

(Image via The Bean and the Bear.)