Say What You Will About Victor, But Upon Victor And The Creature’s First Real Meeting, Note That Victor

ok but walton if you look at the letters in the beginning, while i wouldnt go so far as to say he's a neglected child (we dont get nearly enough insight into his background to make those kind of assumptions) his parents were definitely, at the very least, not very present in walton's life or influential to him growing up. from my memory his mother is literally never mentioned, and the sole mentions of his father are fleeting. simply: 1) he didnt support waltons childhood dreams and interests in sailing and expeditions/discovery 2) he died, leaving walton an orphan to be raised by his older sister margaret 3) his fathers literal dying wish was for walton to never be a mariner. so while i am in no way suggesting his childhood was near as bad as the creature's, or even victor's, i think its incorrect to suggest that walton was completely blind and ignorant to neglect and parental conflict

"victor's creature would kinda be justified in not feeling bad" but he DID feel bad and therein, to me, is where his fault lies. i feel as if the creature would have felt no empathy, no care at all for victor or those lives he was taking, then i would actually blame him for his actions less -- because what creature did was murder innocent people, and destroy victors life, all while understanding and FEELING that it was bad. he did it anyways, while actively going against his own morality

creature "doesnt really like humans and kills them" is incorrect, his reason for killing them was NEVER because he didnt like them, its because he chose to murder for revenge while simultaneously wishing he could be part of the humanity he was destroying, which is why he was so distraught and upset when he was ostracized and met with their fear and hatred every time. because he LIKED THEM, he in his sort of parasocial way LOVED them and wanted to be loved and accepted by them

and walton sees this! which is what his whole speech and their interaction at the end is about! he sees the creatures humanity, he knows creatures life stories and feels for his misfortunes and is moved by his words and expressions of sadness, and even sympathizes with him in a way literally no one else in the book does, yet he also recognizes that creature actively chose to turn away from his innate humanity and goodness and consciously choose violence and revenge instead, while knowing and feeling what he was doing was wrong, and That is why walton condemns creature

"do you think he had enough for a conscience for morality when he was neglected by his own fucking creator???" this line is just funny to me. Because thats. Thats the point of the whole book. That he had a conscience for morality despite his horrific situation

im not going to get into the whole victor-abandoned-creature and the bride-situation because ive talked about it a Lot in the past and this post is already too long. sorry for dumping this all on you months after you made this post its all for the sake of literary analysis and walton is my babygirl i had to jump to his defense 🙏 🙏

walton = big dumb stupid head

it is so weird to me that despite hearing the same tale from victor that we have, when walton hears of victor's creature wailing over victor's death he's basically like:

"erm actually maybe if you listened to your concisnece nothing would have happened l + ratio + bozo!!"

like c'monnNn walton,, do you think he had enough for a conscience for morality when he was neglected by his own fucking creator??? and even then tbh victor's creature would kinda be justified in not feeling bad since again victor ran immediately and has been very against giving his creation a second chance, permanently at least with his bride and all.

and its like gee maybe the guy who lived on his own forever and who humans treated HORRIBLY doesn't really like humans and kills them? :0 woaaa walton crazy shit right there. Idk i just-like i like victor and all but c'mon man you don't neglect ur kid but if u do don't be surprised at the consequences and walton, walton just shut the fuck up

its so interesting to see the variety of ways in which people can interpret the same characters in the same story based on their own variety of life experiences and values and influences!! ive seen quite a few posts going around lately about transfem frankenstein which gave me a moment of pause to realize "huh I literally never thought about that before" and how fascinating it is to see the same things interpreted in opposite ways

ive always been in the "victor is a trans man whose struggles come in part from being incompatible with the female roles that are constantly imposed on him" school and viewed the story and character under that lens and i dont think I've ever actually listed what stands out to me to influence that reading. meandering list under cut:

from childhood, he accepts unquestioningly his mother's declaration that Elizabeth is a present for him, an object that can be transferred to his possession. iirc she's the only character besides the creature that Victor affords any significant physical description at all. he compares her in his descriptions to animals (a summer insect, a bird), and states that he "loved to tend on her, as [he] should on a favourite animal." in the 1831 edition, he refers to her as something otherwordly, a "distinct species," "saintly," "a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features." (ironically, Victor himself later is on the receiving end of this objectification by Walton, described as being like a "celestial spirit, that has a halo around him," "divine wanderer," "godlike," etc.) despite how close Victor and Elizabeth seem based on Victor's tenderness toward and admiration of her, he definitely "others" her as a female peer and keeps her clearly separated in ways that he doesn't quite do with his male peers. to me this comes across as his having negative feelings of connections to women and relies on his parents' assurance that women are something altogether different; and how could he have a feminine role if he accepted that Elizabeth was the one put in his possession to defer to him?

he was put in the role of nurturer/caretaker as a child, a "constant nurse" alongside Elizabeth to Ernest

his nightmare on the night of the creation involved only women: the affection he demonstrated to Elizabeth made her rot into the worm-eaten corpse of his mother, both a punishment of displaying passion towards a woman as well as tying his relationship to Elizabeth back to the presence and wishes of his mother

the most obvious one is the metaphor of childbirth/giving life, which Victor devotes himself to circumventing. it's not the fact that Victor is desperate to find a way to create life that's significant to the transmasc interpretation, but the fact that he dedicates himself to finding a way to create life that's completely separate from one's own body. he still suffers in his extreme labors over the project, but he does succeed in physically externalizing the process. (there's also his preoccupation with masculine ideals in building his creation)

though he divorced himself from the traditional way of giving life, he still in a way tried to compromise between his own strong feelings and the expectations of gender pushed on him. relenting to a "female" role of giving life, no matter how intelligently and miraculously he compromised to meet the expectation in his own way, locked him into an unfortunate reality in which his maleness would not be taken seriously by those around him:

though he had never been previously inclined to anxiety or paranoia and thus couldn't really have known how his friends or family would react if he told the truth of his creation, he was completely confident that if he were to tell anyone he would be dismissed as insane and delirious. he was already aware that his overwhelming emotion and nervous fevers would disqualify him from being taken seriously, even by his family (another obvious one, very strong parallels to the historical view of "female hysteria" that placed the blame of all a woman's troubles on the fact of, simply, being a woman)

over the course of Victor's struggles with guilt and anxiety, he loses virtually all his independence. in his illness he is rendered unable to do anything on his own and is forced to rely fully on men for survival (Clerval and Walton). he also is resigned to the reliance on men to speak for him: Clerval to intervene with the professors, to steer conversations away from the topic of science to less offensive academia; Walton to command his crew of curious sailors to stop harassing Victor with persistent questions.

the creature could have killed Elizabeth at any time, but instead, he promised it would be the specific date of Victor's wedding-night. this was also, significantly, the last straw for Victor: a punishment for publicly taking on a new distinctly male role of husband

even in his last days, deathly ill and devastated by all the tragedies in his life, he was objectified by a man. to Walton, he was something beautiful and captivating and mysterious, whose secrets must be dug out and conquered, much like Walton thought of the North Pole. despite the fact that Victor himself was in such dire need of help, Walton focused less on how he could meet Victor's needs, and more on how Victor could fulfill Walton's own desires and fill a vacancy in his life, thus relating Victor back to himself. (similar to what Victor had expected of Elizabeth: that she would be his comfort and provide happiness and repose from everything he had gone through, focusing more on how she could "fix" everything when she became his wife and relating her existence to propping up his own)

his deathbed—essentially his coffin—was a ship; at his last, he was walled up by an object historically referred to as female and symbolic of a mother figure

the story of Victor's life itself is relayed to readers not directly, but through the record of Walton. everything he had to say was filtered for the rest of the world through a man. his entire life and legacy was more or less passed into the hands of a man to control how or if it would be shared

imo. my perspective is that this smacks of the experience of a man who isn't respected or recognized as a man by the rest of the world. no matter how he tried to separate himself from connotations of femininity and sought to define himself, he is repeatedly forced back into female roles and viewed through a female lens. at the same time, he both isn't allowed by others and doesn't allow himself genuine connection with female figures in his life, with all the female presences slowly chipped away (losses of his mother, Justine, Elizabeth). in the end, the only woman who finally saw his mind and heart laid bare was Margaret—a woman who Victor never even met

the discomfort and horror aspects come not from the pervading presence of and emphasis on femininity, but from the depiction of how women have faced being pushed into such rigid roles, their emotions and wishes dismissed, or derided and how uncomfortable it is to directly face that reality in witnessing a man be treated that way and how he experiences it for the smothering, draining misery it is. more specifically: the smothering, draining misery of a man whose personal reality of being male seems to be invisible to those around him as he's constantly placed under constraints and expectations ascribed to women. femininity and feminine qualities themselves aren't horrors in the story, but the social response to them and the forcible assignment of them on someone who sees them from the outside as separate from himself are

and thats just my interpretation, which I ofc don't think is the "right" one or even a primary one or incompatible with any other readings

it's so funny that Frankenstein's Adam is a committed and full vegetarian. like, yes, here is one of the most famous Halloween monsters. What does he eat? Blood? Brains? Flesh? Children? No. Nuts and berries.

some headshots I did for a Frankenstein assignment

i can be your angle...or yuor devil

been sitting on this for awhile because its a bit controversial, but its one of the main reasons i was pushed into the frankenstein fandom space so i figured it was high time to talk about it

ive noticed that theres this general opinion, both among scholars and present in more fandom-y spaces, that victor is somehow effeminate for what are ultimately symptoms of disability (fainting spells, being bedridden, hysteria, etc) as if being physically or mentally ill is something that is inherently feminine. i have read articles published by academics that victor’s sickness is proof of his “femininity,” which is why he wants to take on the traditional part of a woman, that is, childbirth (via creature)

even in general, and not on an academic level, it emerges in jokes or memes all over the place — people poking at victor for being weak, or sick, or a gay little UWU bean sub, because aw hes fainting all the time XD and he’s sooo dramatic! as if these things were somehow both his choice, and somehow innately feminine

so, not only is there this weird link people are attempting to draw between disability and femininity, but also queerness (particularly, ive noticed, being a “bottom” or “sub” — but thats a whole separate can of worms) and femininity. as if being either of these things is inherently girly or cutesy and thus worthy of being made fun of

there comes a point (particularly when these interpretations leak into broader understandings of something via pop culture), where, for lack of a better word, it comes off as fetishizing or romanticizing queerness and/or queer relationships

and while this may seem relatively harmless on the surface and comes off as just thoughtless jokes made in bad taste, it IS serious. not just within the context of frankenstein, but the general premise of the severity that even subconscious reinforcement of detrimental and stereotypical ideas should be treated with. its a slippery slope from jokes to notions that affect you and how you see the world

this is obviously part of a broader problem with the way disability, gender, identity and etc is thought about and taught, which results in people harboring all sorts of these types of underlying prejudices. its just that victor happens to be a particularly good example, wherein he is a feminized man that is ascribed as “weak,” and the attribute “weak” is ascribed to someone who has been historically analyzed as both disabled and queer. this has been reinforced for decades, and i feel like this treatment of his character in this way is so blatantly obvious and runs rampant while it goes nearly entirely unchecked — and also in the case of frankenstein discourse, its often a quadruple whammy (ableism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia)

and the worst part is that it is so often completely unintentional, and the bulk of this sort of content are well-meaning jokes. i genuinely don’t think people do this in bad faith or out of malice, but spreading these concepts even in formats that appear to be harmless (jokes, memes) just contribute to and continue to spread these ideas and stereotypes. its frustrating because its hard to point out and bring attention to without coming off as nitpicky or overly sensitive because this sort of thing is just so SUBTLE, and these beliefs are so gradually learned and then reinforced on a subconscious level

i could go on but for risk of sounding redundant ill digress, however to be clear this is not me saying you cant view victor as transfem, or disabled, or queer (i do!), or to view him as feminine, or etc, but that you should look at the reasons for WHY you think so, and how you or others treat the subject when talking about it.

New Frankenstein origin story just dropped

now that victor’s chapters are almost starting up everyone make sure to put on your media literacy hats before you decide to hate him !!

she herbert on my west till my dan cain

i was trying to find a specific post that i half-remembered at like 4am last night but out of context this is really funny