Who is De Lacey?

De Lacey is the blind elder of the cottage family the Creature observes while hiding nearby. Once prosperous in France, he now lives in reduced circumstances in exile with his children Agatha and Felix. Because he is blind, De Lacey responds to the Creature’s spoken plea with immediate sympathy and offers help when the Creature first reveals himself; his manner and music provide the Creature’s earliest access to human warmth and moral behavior. The family’s daily routines, mutual care, and De Lacey’s gentle authority become the Creature’s model for language, virtue, and social bonds. The history of the family—De Lacey’s former wealth, imprisonment, and loss after Felix’s attempt to rescue Safie’s father—explains their current poverty and exile. After the Creature’s initial encounter with De Lacey is violently interrupted by the others, the family flees to protect De Lacey, and the creature’s dashed hopes for acceptance contribute to his descent into rage and revenge. De Lacey thus functions as both sanctuary and unwitting catalyst in the Creature’s tragic development.

In the book: De Lacey is the benevolent patriarch of the cottagers whom the creature secretly observes. His kindness, music, and conversations with his children become the creature’s first lessons in language, compassion, and human society. As a figure of dignity and warmth, he symbolizes the possibility of sympathy across differences and shapes the creature’s earliest hopes about humanity.

Personality

Compassionate: When the Creature enters and speaks, De Lacey listens kindly and offers to help before the younger family members return and attack.
Dignified: The Creature observes De Lacey’s music and conversations as expressions of dignity and warmth that model human virtue.
Vulnerable: His blindness makes him dependent on his children and prompts Felix to fear for his safety, which leads the family to flee when they learn of the Creature.
Patient: De Lacey’s steady routine and forbearance form the backdrop of the Creature’s months of secret observation and gradual language learning.

Character arc

De Lacey appears first as a once-prosperous French gentleman now reduced to exile and poverty; his blindness and gentle presence anchor the cottagers’ household and provide the Creature’s first experience of human sympathy. Through the Creature’s months of observation, De Lacey’s patient music, conversation, and filial family relations become the model of human goodness that inspires the Creature’s hope for acceptance. The family’s past—how imprisonment and political ruin stripped them of fortune—explains their humility but does not diminish De Lacey’s humane comportment. When the Creature finally reveals himself, De Lacey responds with kindness, but the arrival of Agatha, Felix, and Safie turns sympathy into panic; the family flees to protect the old man. De Lacey’s forced exile from the cottage severs the Creature’s last route to reconciliation and indirectly precipitates the Creature’s retaliatory violence. From first appearance as a symbol of possible cross-boundary compassion, De Lacey ends by existing as a cause of the Creature’s despair—his vulnerability becoming the reason acceptance is withheld and hope destroyed.

De Lacey in pictures

Through the thin wall of a hovel, the Creature watches the cottage at dawn: Agatha De Lacey tidies and cooks by a small hearth, Felix De Lacey rises and prepares to leave after the first meal, and the old blind De Lacey sits with his instrument smiling while the younger two tend him. The family’s tender gestures and quiet tears are visible and painfully intimate to the hidden observer.

Spring arrives: buds and wet earth frame a scene where Felix reads aloud to the blind De Lacey on the cottage steps while Agatha listens. In the foreground, hidden but nearer than before, the Creature practices rough, nascent words and watches them with hopeful longing — he has learned names and language and dreams of revealing himself.

A veiled young woman on horseback pauses at the cottage gate; she lifts her black veil to reveal an astonishing, angelic face — raven hair braided, dark gentle eyes, cheeks flushed pink — as Felix hurries forward, rapturous. Agatha and the old man look on in surprise and delight while, half-hidden in the shadows of a nearby hedge, the Creature watches, transfixed and anxious.

Inside the dim, humble cottage Safie sits at the old man's feet and plays the guitar; her song swells and falls like a nightingale, drawing tears of sorrow and delight from listeners. Agatha takes the instrument afterwards and sings more simply; the Creature crouches unseen in a corner, overcome, wiping tears while absorbing the music and the tender domestic scene.

On a bright autumn day De Lacey sits playing a mournful tune on his guitar inside the cottage while the Creature, having removed the planks that hid his refuge, knocks and steps forward to plead. He clasps the blind old man's hand, voice trembling, confessing his abandonment and begging for sympathy; De Lacey, moved, promises to judge only by what he hears and vows to help undeceive the others.

The cottage door bursts open and the younger visitors return: Felix lunges, tearing the Creature from De Lacey's knees and striking him; Agatha collapses fainting, Safie screams and flees into the yard, and the room explodes with terrified faces. Reeling from pain and the sting of rejection, the Creature suppresses a savage fury and, heartbroken, slips away into the surrounding woods and winter dusk.

Relationships

Felix De Lacey His son, whose rescue attempts, fear for his father’s safety, and violent reaction to the Creature shape the family’s fortunes and ultimate flight.
Agatha De Lacey His daughter, who shares household duties and whose presence contributes to the domestic virtues the Creature admires.
Safie A newcomer whom the family receives into their care; her arrival revives the household and plays a role in the family’s learning and language practices the Creature overhears.
The Creature An observer who learns kindness and language from De Lacey and who experiences the old man’s initial sympathy before being rejected by the rest of the family.
Victor Frankenstein Indirectly connected: De Lacey’s flight after the Creature’s revelation helps precipitate the Creature’s path back toward Victor and subsequent vengeance.

Why De Lacey matters

De Lacey embodies the novel’s possibility of sympathy across difference: his blindness lets him judge by voice and character rather than appearance, offering the Creature a brief glimpse of unconditional human compassion. That the younger family members nonetheless reject the Creature—forcing De Lacey into exile—underscores Shelley’s exploration of sight versus insight, the social roots of prejudice, and the tragic costs when humane impulses are overridden by fear. De Lacey’s role thus highlights themes of education, belonging, and how fragile human charity can be when confronted by physical otherness.

Chapters with De Lacey

More Frankenstein characters

Victor FrankensteinProtagonist
The CreatureMajor character
Elizabeth LavenzaMajor character
Alphonse FrankensteinMajor character
Henry ClervalMajor character
William FrankensteinMinor character
Justine MoritzMinor character
Felix De LaceyMajor character

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