If Victor Is The Creature's Literal Father, Then By Extension The Female Creature Would Have Been The

i kinda wish more people discussed when bringing up the Gloves in hammer frankenstein that victor wears them because of his disability. it is one of the most consistently canon facts not just about victor, but in universe, period, considering all the contradictions and unreliable narration in the series.

he has been disabled since the fire during the ending of evil at the very least, and if even you don't consider that movie canon, his disability is still mentioned, focused on, and/or important throughout every film after that. the motifs of fire, disability, and mind vs body of the series are only intensified and made more profound considering victor's disability.

the sheer significance of the disability being of his hands, his hands of G-d, the things he uses to create is something that i rarely ever see anyone else pointing out. besides the implications of him being a disabled person who wants to literally have a perfect, immortal body already being powerful enough on its own to make it worthy of note, it can also be looked upon as a more visual metaphor/representation of infertility.

the plots and dramas of every film after evil are very much fueled by him being disabled. and that is just explicitly canon.

i have many many thoughts about the portrayal of elizabeth (and henry) in adaptations of frankenstein and they need to be broadcasted immediately. feverish incoherent raving about this subject under the cut. tw for very brief mention of SA

so. elizabeth lavenza. by the time of the wedding, elizabeth is rather obviously portrayed to be just as morose and brooding as victor is, she just isn't as susceptible to episodes of mania and psychosis so it doesn't seem nearly as dramatic compared to victor's trauma. she's been through the gutter herself, being an orphan for starters, then being adopted into a family and having to assume the role of caregiver in the frankenstein family because of the coercion of her dead mother to not only take her place as the maternal figure in the family but also marry her surrogate brother (or literal cousin, depending on which version you read). then her surrogate younger brother william dies, and the within weeks she has to watch her closest heterosexual life partner justine be unjustly hung by a corrupt justice system. and she vocalizes, actively, her pessimism and hopelessness in light of these many tragedies. tldr she's fucked up and rightfully so, and while she's a little less crippled by depression than victor, she still has the distinct appearance of being rather ill, listless, and tired, especially towards the end of the novel. anyways my point is in the novel, the most important thing about elizabeth is not that she's a woman and victor's bride. yes, that's obviously the purpose she was created for, but shelley went out of her way to give elizabeth an extremely definite and unique character. she's gentle and maternal like most woman in early 19th century literature, but she's also introspective, intelligent, and perceptive. she displays agency and self-awareness repeatedly (her guilt over the locket, going to the execution of justine even when alphonse tells her not to, waxing poetic on the failures of the justice system, asking repeatedly and rather pointedly if victor actually wants to go through with the marriage, obvious anxiety and solemnity concerning the wedding) we also have to take into account that elizabeth's personality is being relayed to us BY VICTOR, and he wants to see elizabeth as docile and femininely passive, even if a lot of her actions themselves in the novel actually seem to contradict that. also, i am peppering in that many people can (and have) made a genuine and convincing argument that victor and elizabeth are not in love and were groomed to accept their union by their weirdo parents - that they care for each other, but the text includes important nuances that make it evident that victor doesn't feel anything for elizabeth like that. it is a legitimate interpretation of the book - dare i say it's the correct interpretation of the relationship between victor and elizabeth. but that's another essay for another day and it's not SUPER integral to my rant here today. it just highlights the complexity of elizabeth as a character.

so. for some fucking reason, writers do not understand this when they are adapting the novel, and do not want to apply more than eight seconds of critical thinking and the absolute shallowest 3rd grader levels of reading comprehension to this character, so they simplify her from what she was in the original novel, freshly complex, opinionated, and introspective to boring useless incest lady. victor is never portrayed with the same amount of nuance he deserves in any adaptation (also another essay for another day), because adaptations also have a very surface level reading of him as "guy who was ambitious and played god which immediately cements him as an irredeemable self-aggrandizing asshole and/or a raging insufferable narcissist who's a dick to everyone around him EXCEPT for elizabeth" but at least SOME adaptations are able to kiiinnnddaaaa capture the sympathy meant to be felt for the character in the novel. not so for elizabeth. her character in basically every adaptation can be boiled down to this: "omg victor my brother let me hammer in that you are my brother. im just going to stand here and look clueless and annoyingly naive for the entire novel. im just a little girl and idk what's going on victor but im gonna stay blindly devoted to you and ask numerous but completely useless questions 🥺 let me stare at you with tender worry in my eyes and treat you like a child even though we have absolutely no romantic chemistry and you're an objectifying dick towards me and we have nothing in common and the audience is actively dry heaving as we sensually make out for no other reason than to have characters in this movie sensually make out. im basically a carbon copy of original-novel-henry expect super boring and super useless because im a woman which means the doylist explanation for why im here HAS TO BE ONLY for the main character to fuck me and to hold the attention of the male viewership. now time for me to get SA'd by the creechur for basically no reason" we can observe something approximating this in basically every frankenstein adaptation i've ever seen: kenneth branagh's (my enemy) 1994 film, the 2004 hallmark miniseries, the musical, and the ballet. also in the 1931 film, but that one isn't really trying to be book-accurate so it doesn't really count for this rant.

with this understanding of elizabeth, writers then attempt to artificially generate more romance between these characters, mostly by, yes, replacing a lot of henry's role in the novel with elizabeth, hence why we see so many adaptations (1994, 2004, ballet) make elizabeth nurse victor back to health in ingolstadt instead of henry, which generates... so many problems. one problem with this is that it just sorta ruins henry's original role in the novel in one go. writers recognize that henry is supposed to be victor's character foil, but now they don't have much for him to do since they gave all of the romantic tension moments to elizabeth. meaning that in adaptations you can tell the writers didn't really know what to do with henry because he's reduced to a comic relief bumbling idiot (1994, ballet, 2004 to an extent) with his only personality traits being "random xd" and "morals good playing god wrong!!!! 😠" (2004, musical, several independent stage adaptations). they keep him as a character foil, but just replace all of his compassion, tenderness, and devotion with elizabeth, while effectively draining henry of all of his original appeal and charm and stamping those traits onto their already stripped-of-all-nuance elizabeth. so now both henry and elizabeth are not only extremely different from their original roles in the novel but extremely, woefully less charming and complex. this especially pisses me off because it's explicitly stated in the book that henry was victor's only friend precisely because he was victor's intellectual equal, so seeing henry reduced to a smiley idiot and/or stupid generic male side character with Morals fills me with a visceral rage. writers will also sometimes make victor and henry meet in college (ballet, 1994) and try to strengthen the bond between victor and elizabeth by making it appear as though she was victor's ONLY childhood friend and companion. other times, victor and henry will be friends pre-ingolstadt (2004, musical) but most of the relationship development will be between elizabeth and victor. those two have all of the tender bonding moments while henry is just kinda inexplicably there sometimes. but i digress. this post is supposed to be about elizabeth. but IF YOU NEED A CHARACTER TO BE A SUNSHINE SOFT OPTIMISTIC LOVER FOR VICTOR IN A FRANKENSTEIN ADAPTATION, HENRY IS ABLE AND WILLING ARE YOU STEPPING ON MY BALLS

clervalstein is true. anyway

elizabeth is somehow more complex and powerful as a female character than the literal adaptations produced almost 200 years later. in adaptations, the most important thing about her is somebody else. the development of all of her character traits (which usually never go beyond standing around and looking helpless) are solely dependant on victor. she feels more like an appendage of the protagonist than an individual with thoughts and experiences separate from victor, and her character is loosely defined and flimsy so the writers can have her conform to her actions in the book whenever it's convenient and then change things up entirely that completely contradict her characterization in the book whenever it's convenient. i have no idea why the fuck this keeps happening with frankenstein adaptations (it's misogyny) and because it isn't looking like guillermo del toro's film (from what ive heard) is going to be super book accurate, i dont foresee too much of a shift in frankenstein adaptations.

look i get it. it's a movie/play/ballet which lasts like 2 hours and you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. i understand you have to make sacrifices for brevity and these characters are, frankly, a lot less interesting and exciting than victor and creechur. people didn't come to see john hughes levels of charm and complexity in the side characters, they came to watch the creechur do scary shit and for victor to say IT'S ALIVE 😱 and be an evil mad scientist you love to hate. they came for their values of "it's wrong to play god!!!" and "too much ambition bad!!!" to be re-cemented even though that's not even the original point of the novel. which is why imo if you're going to adapt frankenstein in a manner that does justice to the beautiful and sublime subtlety of the original novel, it needs to be either a miniseries or a REALLY LONG film. it's a short book, but it's very eventful, and imo for an adaptation to work you have to let the audience sit with it. which is why you all need to donate to my gofundme so i can produce an honest to god frankenstein adaptation. in fact, im running for president in this year's primaries :3

just a disclaimer: im not an academic or a scholar or anything. i just like the book. i probably have no idea what the fuck im talking about. but im a very very passionate little guy and this has been my rant

“match my freak” how about you match my poetic misery instead

i (obviously, if you’re familiar with my account at all) don’t perceive victor’s “abandonment” of the creature as his Great Sin (which was actually the creature leaving victor’s apartment of his own volition while victor was out on a stress-induced walk), but i do think you’re demonizing the creature here a little bit in the process of defending victor.

i think calling the antagonism the creature faced “minor” is wholly underselling it: he faced straight-up violence. he was turned loose with no direction nor knowledge of himself or anything around, in a world without a single being like him, and then was shot, beaten, and/or verbally assaulted any time he faced a person. he was met time and time again with violence or malice or fear by those around him. this is undeniable. you also seem to imply the creature’s tendency to respond to antagonism with aggression was somehow innate, which it definitely wasn’t—in the creature’s early chapters shelley devotes a lot of time to establishing just that, i.e. that creature was not born violent but warped that way by the society that rejected him. the creature outlines this clearly: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture” (1831). this transition from love and sympathy to vice and hatred is what his whole arc with the delaceys is about. 

of course, that in no way justifies the actions he chose to take, which to me have always been inexcusable regardless of the extreme circumstances that culminated in those decisions, but we still shouldn’t undermine the fact that there WERE extreme circumstances. in doing so you lose a lot of the thematic significance and commentary regarding society.

where creature’s fault lies, to me, is that he cultivated an understanding of society and its evils and of morality and empathy and of right from wrong. he feels this inherently: “For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow… when I heard details of vice and bloodshed I turned away with disgust and loathing” (1831). but despite this, he CHOOSES revenge, on the delaceys, on victor, on the world as a whole, actively turning away from his own morality, his innate humanity and sense of goodness. he consciously chooses violence and revenge instead, while knowing and more importantly FEELING, to the extent that he abhors himself, that it was a moral wrong. he would be a lot less powerful of a narrator and as a character if his propensity to react with violence was somehow innate rather than the internal struggle and gray morality that we get in the novel.

but without that external factor (repeated negative interaction with society), he wouldn’t have actually developed this fatal flaw at all, because it was what eventually caused his knee-jerk violent response in the first place. that’s not to say i think any sort of hypothetical victor-raises-creature scenario could have been successful, it just may have been less violent—but victor was physically and mentally incapable of rearing a child at the time, and even disregarding that fact, there are so many other factors on why it wouldn’t have worked, including that, like you said, victor alone could not have satisfied the creature’s needs for company, because his need for romantic and sexual intimacy with another being like him would still exist. ultimately there was no chance for a good outcome for either of them, and this is why frankenstein makes such a good tragedy!

there's something that doesn't really get talked about a lot in the critiques of victor's actions in frankenstein, which is that even if victor hadn't committed what a lot of people view as his Great Sin, abandoning the creature, it still wouldn't have solved anything. the creature's main grievances beyond being angry at victor for his abandonment are that he's hideous and therefore everyone will hate him, and that he's alone in his entire species and therefore has no girlfriend. and while some of that can be mitigated by victor's involvement, victor being present isn't gonna stop other people from thinking that the creature is butt-ugly, nor is it gonna deal with any desire he might have for romantic or sexual intimacy with someone he shares common traits with. and it is also crucially not going to curb the creature's tendency within his personality to respond to every minor antagonism with violent aggression that oftentimes culminates in the straight up murder of innocent people. that's his fatal flaw and it doesn't go away just because there's no external factor involved anymore. victor could be a father figure to the creature from day one and there could still be one person who calls him an ugly abomination at the wrong moment, or victor could say he's not making another experiment for whatever reason, and then boom! we arrive once again at the child killing and the framing family friends for it and the boyfriend killing and the wife killing as the situation escalates, because one of the reasons the book goes the way it does is that the creature himself cannot get out of his own fucking way and makes the situation infinitely worse to the point where mutual destruction is both his and victor's only way out.

for some reason people seem to think that mary somehow stumbled into writing a commentary on marriage/incest accidentally, and that the themes of frankenstein are all about her trauma due to her experiences as a victim of the patriarchy, as a woman and a mother surrounded by men - as if she wasnt the child of radical liberals who publicly renounced marriage, as if she herself as well as percy shelley had similar politics on marriage, as if she would not go on to write a novel where the central theme is explicitly that of father/daughter incest years later…

the most obvious and frequent critique of victor i see is of his attempt to create life - the creature - without female presence. it’s taught in schools, wrote about by academics, talked about in fandom spaces - mary shelley was a feminist who wrote about feminism by making victor a misogynist. he’s misogynistic because he invented a method of procreation without involving women purely out of male entitlement and masculine arrogance and superiority, and shelley demonstrates the consequences of subverting women in the creation process/and by extension the patriarchy because this method fails terribly - his son in a monster, and victor is punished for his arrogance via the murder of his entire family; thus there is no place for procreation without the presence of women, right?

while this interpretation – though far from my favorite – is not without merit, i see it thrown around as The interpretation, which i feel does a great disservice to the other themes surrounding victor, the creature, the relationship between mother and child, parenthood, marriage, etc.

this argument also, ironically, tends to undermine the agency and power of frankenstein’s female characters, because it often relies on interpreting them as being solely passive, demure archetypes to establish their distinction from the 3 male narrators, who in contrast are performing violent and/or reprehensible actions while all the woman stay home (i.e., shelley paradoxically critiques the patriarchy by making all her female characters the reductive stereotypes that were enforced during her time period, so the flaws of our male narrators arise due to this social inequality).

in doing so it completely strips elizabeth (and caroline and justine to a lesser extent) of the power of the actions that she DID take — standing up in front of a corrupt court, speaking against the injustice of the system and attempting to fight against its verdict, lamenting the state of female social status that prevented her from visiting victor at ingolstadt, subverting traditional gender roles by offering victor an out to their arranged marriage as opposed to the other way around, taking part in determining ernest’s career and education in direct opposition to alphonse, etc. it also comes off as a very “i could fix him,” vibe, that is, it suggests if women were given equal social standing to men then elizabeth would have been able to rein victor in so to speak and prevent the events of the book from happening. which is a demeaning expectation/obligation in of itself and only reinforces the reductive passive, motherly archetypes that these same people are speaking against

it is also not very well supported: most of the argument rests on ignoring female character’s actual characterization and focusing one specific quote, often taken out of context (“a new species would bless me as its creator and source…no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as i should deserve theirs”) which “proves” victor’s sense of male superiority, and on victors treatment/perception of elizabeth, primarily from a line of thinking he had at five years old, where he objectified her by thinking of her (or rather — being told so by caroline) as a gift to him. again, the morality of victor’s character is being determined by thoughts he had at five years old.

obviously this is not at all to say i think their relationship was a healthy one - i dont think victor and elizabeth’s marriage was ever intended to be perceived as good, but more importantly, writing their relationship this way was a deliberate critique of marriage culture.

this shit is sending me

@kitsu-katsu’s comments (i hope you don’t mind—i thought this was all very clever analysis and wanted to reblog it separately for myself)

Something has been bothering me about the book Frankenstein, and I have to say it.

Why didn’t Victor Frankenstein give the creature a wife but just, like, tie her tubes. Like, the Creature, I’m going to call him Adam, doesn’t know anatomy? He wouldn’t know that. His brain was from a dead guy. That guy probably didn’t know anatomy. Even if he did, Adam wouldn’t know it. Adam is very smart, so even if he did go out and learn 1818 anatomy, Victor could probably just go and be sneaky about it? Not add ovaries? Or heck, get ovaries from someone who was infertile? I mean, there’s lots of couples who are in love and don’t have children. When Adam asked for a bride, he was mostly asking for companionship. He was alone in the world with nobody to talk to.

Frankenstein could have had a happy ending if he was smart about it.

(I know, not the point of the book, but seriously, I feel like this could have been a solution, rather than just point blank destroying the bride, telling the creature no, and having his wife killed as a result)

my take on dorian gray. hi

”this video is made possible by ingolstadt morgue. not sponsored” victor says while breaking and entering