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The Creature - Blog Posts
If you were a skeleton, I feel like you'd be a lot calmer. After all, nothing would be able to get under your skin.
Sincerely, It.
slap a cheese on it
joy division said love will tear us apart but i think it will actually be the jaws of The Creature
FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Joellen Bland | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Gary P. Cohen and Jeffrey Jackson | FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady & James V. Hart | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley.
frankenstein & fatherhood
incest in frankenstein is not always literal but often manifests through the merging of roles--for example, caroline makes elizabeth into an extension of herself, shaping her into a replacement maternal figure who then becomes victor's bride. caroline's actions suggest a deferred form of incestuous desire (particularly when considering victor's nightmare where elizabeth turns into caroline and he kisses her)--she does not act on it herself but instead uses elizabeth as an intermediary, crafting her in her own image and ensuring she remains within the family unit as both daughter, sister and wife. in doing so, elizabeth not only fulfills the role of wife to victor but also the role of wife to alphonse, as she becomes his quote "more than daughter." given this history, victor's act of creation becomes more than just a scientific endeavor--it is, in a sense, an unconscious repetition of the generational cycle of misplaced desire. victor talks about his creature during the creation process in ways that strongly resemble euphemisms for sexual transgression (as much as people who favor the creature-as-son interpretation don’t like to acknowledge this): he describes a night of feverish anticipation, bodily toil, and an act of creation or "birth" conducted in solitude, followed by overwhelming regret and self-loathing the moment he sees what hes done. there is, too, the same blurring of boundaries between victor and the creature that is a running theme within the rest of the frankensteins: creator and created, parent and child, self and other. victor's disgust at his creature, then, is twofold: he is repulsed by its monstrous form, yes, but he is also repulsed by what it represents--his own participation in perpetuating an ongoing legacy of psuedo-incest. when the creature demands a mate, this dynamic becomes more pronounced. the creature essentially asks victor to complete the incestuous cycle by providing him with a bride, a second creature formed in the same manner, what would technically be the creature's sister; victor's destruction of the female creature suggests an almost violent reaction to his own subconscious recognition of the pattern he is repeating. it is significant then that he chooses, though without realizing it, to break this cycle of abuse by refusing to comply to a marriage between siblings like his mother did to him and elizabeth.
Strange question but I'm doing a paper for my biology class for extra credit and I wanted a second opinion and I've already sent you a lot of asks that you've responded kindly to so I felt comfortable bringing this to you: So, Im doing a paper on Frankensteins monster, and I was exploring his biology when it struck me; Would Adam be able to have kids? Assuming Victor made him with reproduction in mind would it even be possible considering hes made of.. dead people? Same with his nervous system, is it one nervous system he stole or did he meticulously wire a completely new one from various dead people?
Best of luck on your paper! I'll answer as best I can. Victor DID make the creature with reproduction in mind, he had initially wanted to start a whole race of creatures that might look upon him as a god. He was also very concerned about the creature and the bride procreating. The book doesn't go into any detail about how Adam's reproductive system functions or is made so that is up for speculation and how functional he actually is is anyone's guess. I have headcanons but they are just that, headcanons. I personally take the approach that Adam's reproductive system is functional. In 1779, which , if we're assuming Victor created Adam sometime in the 1790's, would have been before Adam was built, an Italian physiologist named Lazzaro Spallanzani proved that a sperm cell contained a nucleus and cytoplasm. It was through his experiments that it was proven for the first time that the embryo develops as a result of physical contact between the egg and the sperm. That knowledge of reproduction on a cellular level WAS available to Victor at the time. Spallanzani also discovered you could freeze sperm via cooling and reactivate it later. So giving Adam viable semen is actually not even the most implausible thing about his creation. Now, who's semen is it and where and how did Victor get it? That is entirely up to the headcanons of the reader but because I am hard leaning into the more messed up themes of Frankenstein and the "horror of motherhood/childbirth/parenthood," I like to head canon that Victor may have derived Adam's sperm cells from his own. Because he has a desire to procreate in some way, but not directly. Not by impregnating his fiance, Elizabeth, but by using this created being as his proxy to start a new race. A race Victor would literally be the father of. I tend to play with the idea that Victor's viceral disgust comes not just from Adam being what he is but from the intent of Adam being an idealized "perfect" version of VIctor himself. That is my take on it all, I hope it helps and I hope you do well on your paper!
Slice of life comedy where after Victor fucks off and leaves his science crime baby behind that instead of the monster also fucking off on a cross country self help trip he ends up in the dubious care of Victor’s college dorm mates and instead of killing his way through several families it just becomes a story of these increasingly harried college students trying to raise their absentee classmates walking talking osha violation while simultaneously keeping him hidden from their RA
Idk I find it kind of endearing that fans of the book tend to call him The Creature rather than The Monster
I’ve seen this comment a few times on my art here and on insta and I’m genuinely curious— WHERE did people get the idea that the Creature “just had creepy eyes”?? That Victor only ran away because the Creature’s eyes freaked him out?
I’ve seen people say this repeatedly and it couldn’t be further from the truth like. He is explicitly described as an eight foot tall cobbled together corpse with skin that barely covers his veins, yes his eyes are creepy but that would probably be the last thing anyone would notice about the Creature tbh 😭
who let these lines go so hard in an otherwise terrible script. they had no right
i really adore the fact that by the end of the book franknestein had managed to create an equal and mate to the creature by having turned himself as such. like he has become so misshapen that he can no longer fit in human society and his internal monologue is so eerily reminiscent of the creatures. this is franknestein:
He wished me to seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not abhorred! they were my brethren, my fellow-beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt that I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them, whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would, each and all, abhor me, and hunt me from the world, did they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me!
and this is the creature about the family in the cottage:
I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions: but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.
Idk everyone can take what they wish from media, but for me the moral of “Frankenstein” was not that Victor is the true monster or even that he’s necessarily stupid. Makes me sad to see a story fundamentally about humanity being reduced to black and white. How can one recognize that the monster is unjustly robbed of humanity and compassion and then rob Victor of that same thing. Lol
Growing up is realising that the monster in Frankenstein was, in fact, the monster all along and those essays you wrote in school about how the Victor caused his downfall because of arrogance which, while true to a degree, are also emblematic of a wider societal problem of how we underplay the actions of serial killers because a sad thing happened to them once, while also perpetuating the idea that some people "had it coming" and, on top of that, forgetting who the real victims are. Because who even is Justine, amiright?
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.
My thoughts on Frankenstein can basically be summed up in, “Victor is a dickhead but at least he’s not an incel,” and “The Creature is a dickhead but at least he’s not a rich prick”.
To this day “ermmm Victor/Creature is the innocent guy and (X other character) is the bad guy achtually 🤓☝️” takes make me so fucking mad. THEY BOTH SUCK, AND THEYRE BOTH STILL SYMPATHETIC PROTAGONISTS. THATS THE POINT OF THE FUCKING BOOK😭
Also people who think Victor was the bad guy for refusing to make the Bride and going “huh, maybe making a creature for the sole purpose of suffering and fucking you is really fucked up and not my place at all actually?” legitimately need their fucking heads checked because do you genuinely have zero reading comprehension or life experience??? Can you read a book? Can you understand basic themes and concepts? Are you actually stupid?
Victor is a terrible guy for being self absorbed enough to cheat God and nature itself, creating a being that was never meant to be born and inflicting immense suffering on it by the nature of it existing in a way that fundamentally can not be balanced out — following the Christian influences and background in which the novel was written at the time, Victor is not God, he can’t offer the creature salvation or in any way metaphysically balance out his suffering, so he just introduces him to a life of a living hell by his own design and by the nature of the fact that Victor is just a man, and the Creature himself is terrible because the nihilism inherent to his condition as Victor’s creation turns him into a murderous incel who wants to just further the suffering Victor caused, because if he can’t be happy, nobody should, so he kills every innocent bystander who Victor loved and demands that he makes him a woman like Eve who’s equal to him in suffering, who exists for the sole purpose of being his, who was created to be his.
And Victor says no, because he has actual character development and realises it isn’t his place (also, very likely mirroring his engagement to Elizabeth if you kinda follow the same reading as me that Victor never really loved her romantically and felt forced into the marriage because of his mother), which, shock horror, makes Victor a more likeable protagonist, because again, shockingly, he’s actually a pretty good guy in this one situation making a really good moral decision for once by saying “yeah I’m not going to create a woman whose sole purpose in life is to fuck you and suffer as much as you, also what if she doesn’t want to fuck you???”
Are people allergic to the concept of character development or something?? Are people allergic to multifaceted complex characters?? You feel terrible for the creature because of what Victor has done to him by bringing him into existence, and you feel terrible for Victor because of how doomed he is (in the worst way, it’s not just him suffering, he has to watch everyone he loves being forced to suffer because of him) by his one mistake and how he doesn’t have any way to fix it. A creation with no God, and a Man with the weight of God upon him because of his own mistake. They’re both doomed. That’s why it’s so good, THE BOOK IS A FUCKING TRAGEDY WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT FOR SOME PEOPLE TO GRASP???😭
i think i agree with some of what you're saying here, particularly the justine-trial thing and also victor's lack of foresight (ironic, then, that prometheus was the god of foresight), but i'll challenge you in regard to the "victor makes every wrong decision possible" bit: what was the RIGHT decision? realistically, given his knowledge of the situation (people tend to forget this is a story being told in retrospect and act like victor should have been omniscient...) and the hand that he was dealt, what could victor have possibly done that could have actually altered his outcome? personally i tend to veer towards the belief that after the animation of the creature, he could have done, well, Nothing, or at least very little (i'll elaborate on why i think so if you'd like, do let me know!)—narratively, victor's greatest, irreversible sin is the creation of the creature itself, and this is why frankenstein functions as a tragedy.
in regard to the creature though i'd have to disagree. the creature loves and appreciates humanity, he doesn't resent it! that's why he wants to be a part of it so badly, and keeps trying over and over despite the violence he's faced with! that's why he feels the sting of rejection so badly and reacts the way he does! and even after he becomes embittered after the delaceys, his request of victor to make him a mate is an inherently human one, meant to emulate the people and families and relationships that he's read about and observed!
not only that, he explicitly finds it UNnatural to commit acts of violence. when he hears of such acts while listening to felix teach safie, this is outlined clearly:
Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another, as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.
and later, this is his reaction to reading plutarch's lives:
I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice... I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus.
that is, he naturally appreciates virtue and looks towards pacifists as role models. and in general, i think it's wrong to say the creature's only been taught hatred and violence. even if he never experienced directly it himself, he understood and experienced, through lessons with safie and through his own readings, virtue, compassion, etc. from the outside. (arguably, his relationship with the delaceys was parasocial enough that at the very least he believed, and at one point, felt, that he had taken part in this sharing of virtue and compassion as well—he did not feel completely separated from it).
even after being stoned by the village people, being met with fear, rejection, violence, etc. the creature thinks this:
As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were called forth and displayed.
crime is still a "distant evil"; triumphed by the "benevolence and generosity" ever before him. there's no resentment of the world, no desire to reproduce the violence he's faced, not until his confrontation with the delaceys. it is this rejection, not victor's rejection, that is the creature's undoing. this is when he burns down their house, chooses to take revenge on victor, murders william, etc.
even then, his natural distaste for violence and appreciation for virtue is so strong, to the extent that he abhors himself for committing these same acts (go look at his interaction with walton at the end). and ultimately THAT is why i find the creature unforgivable, because it's shown time and time again violence is not this sort of knee-jerk reaction to him, and when he chooses to do the things he does, it's with a cultivated knowledge of right versus wrong, and not only that, a cultivated FEELING of right versus wrong. he actively goes against his own morals, detesting himself but refusing to stop all the while, for the sake of revenge. but i'll hop off my soap box...
a take on Frankenstein for some reason
There's far more nuance to both Victor and the creature than anyone tends to give either character credit for. The creature isn't evil but also not misunderstood, he's a hyper-intelligent child forced to find his own way in a world that time and time again violently rejects him. The fist time he visits a town they stone him on sight. Of course he resents humanity, and Victor's rejection of him is a final straw. He comes to his own naïve conclusions, and having been shown violence time and time again, finds it natural when something detestable comes before him. So when he finds a child baring his neglectful fathers name, the rage he feels compels him to murder.
That is objectively wrong yes, but you cannot expect anything less from the child who has only been taught hatred and violence.
The creature is like a dog that has been taught to bite without warning because it's never had any other choice. That makes it understandable, tragic but not entirely justified.
equally Victor isn't evil either, people get on his back for not speaking up during Justine's trail (tbf what was he supposed to say? "my big magic monster is the true culprit, no I have no proof of that or even that he exists, just trust me bro") (we even see how poorly that goes when he tells the Sherriff later on in the book), but I attribute that to the fact that Victor was an extremely haunted and prideful person who believed it was up to him to solve his mess (it kinda is but not he way he tries to) because "surely nobody else could!" He's also fairly stupid. Scientifically he's a genius, obviously. But he also makes almost every wrong decision possible and rarely considers the consequences of his actions (He also believes the creature is planning to kill him when it's so unbelievably obvious that he intends to kill Elizabeth). He decides to try and deal with the problem he's caused on his own, but fails so many times that he eventually dies and the creature solves the issue of his existence himself. Victor was more of a deadbeat, a narcissist and a moron than a villain.
Because Frankenstein is not a story with true villains, just bad people
When your 8ft son built from dead corpses has daddy issues because of you
As I finished reading yesterday's chapter, the ending got me thinking about the usage of water in Frankenstein. I don't quite have the bandwidth at the moment to properly explore it all, but I think there's some really interesting usage of it. Here's a few pieces:
There's repeated imagery of Victor drifting aimlessly on a lake, both in times of happiness and when he is avoiding his promise to the Creature.
He goes to an island, separated from the mainland to build the female Creature. And then when he decides not to complete his work, he disposes of her body in the ocean. Immediately afterward, his habitual drifting is turned against him, with the sea sweeping him away and nearly killing him, then delivering him directly to Henry's corpse
Once again he finds brief peace while laying on the deck of the ship leaving Ireland, looking at the sky above... but again it's interrupted, this time by a nightmare
Elizabeth and Victor travel from their wedding by water, and the narration of the passage really drives home the beauty around them, but that their travel towards shore is taking them away from a place of refuge and into danger. There's a feeling of 'if they just stayed on the water...'
So that's Victor. And there could be something said about the difference between still water/safety, and moving water/danger, perhaps. Which would be an interesting detail as well to how all the beautiful things Elizabeth points out are in motion. But there there's also:
The Creature first seeing himself in a puddle
Him saving that girl from drowning in a river as his final positive (for them, very much not for him) encounter with people before every following one turning out violent
He first meets Victor by the 'frozen sea', is linked seemingly with glaciers and frozen water
He follows Victor across the ocean and to his isolated island, and seems to have acquired his own boat/be an expert at steering it and traveling rapidly across the water
And that's not even getting into the framing device set in the Arctic, with Walton's intentions to explore, the danger of the ice. The Creature (better at resisting cold than humans) being chased by Victor. Just a whole bunch of stuff. It feels intentional, it feels like there's something to talk about here, but I can't quite parse it all out.
@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)
Fascinating trend I’ve noticed from lurking in Frankenstein-related tags:
If there’s a male construct, people frame him as the creator’s child. He has full agency and personhood and deserves to be raised in a family. The most obvious example of this is Frankenstein’s Creature, but you’ll see echoes of it with creators of robots, Pinocchio, etc.
If there’s a female construct, people frame it as expected that she’s created to be a romantic/sexual object. I saw a few posts that Pygmalion is morally superior to Victor Frankenstein because he fell in love with his creation, for instance. I don’t need to go into the dozens of “make a female robot and fall for her” tropes.
The most uncomfortable intersection of this dichotomy are the countless posts insisting that it was Victor’s duty as a father to create a female to gift to his son—and that the “wait but she’ll be an actual person of her own” reservations Victor had in the book were immoral. He owes his son (male construct = family, agency, personhood) the gift of a person (female construct = object, no agency, not family). She wouldn’t be a daughter, just “the Bride.” Nothing about Víctor owing her happiness, but the exact opposite: that she must be custom-designed to be miserable and rejected so she’d be trapped with the male-creature.
For a piece of literature where personhood is such a central theme, it’s a disturbing and disappointing trend.
every time someone says victor hated the creature because of his scary yellow eyes an angel loses its wings
victor's belief that he's responsible for the deaths of his family (by extension of creating the creature) was borne out of excessive guilt, i might go as far as to say bordering on delusions of persecution. id argue walton was more directly responsible for deaths than victor ever was (several members of his crew died on his ship as a result of his inexperience and persistence), but first and foremost the creature was responsible, not victor, and to suggest otherwise i think is blatantly ignoring the creature's autonomy. he had a cultivated understanding of morality and the world's evils and chose, while knowing and feeling that it was a moral wrong, to murder. i think, eventually, it is this willingness to deliberately go against his own morals to commit evil acts that victor considers monstrous, not just the creature's monstrous appearance in of itself, which is one of the defining factors of his choice not to create the female creature.
if anything, id argue this passage is actually proof of victor acknowledging his "failure as a parent" or rather his duty as a parent, its just not done so directly. this is a story being told in retrospect, and that fact colors victor's narration because he already knows the events that are being described. in this sense, the quote seems more of an acknowledgement of this than anything else, particularly with the language of "creature" and "being to which they had given life" used to describe a child, which, like youre saying, are both blatant parallels to how victor describes the creature. if you look at this and then consider it within the context of victor and creature's confrontation on the alps, where victor does actually explicitly admit to his duties as a creator, i think it changes things:
For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand.
and then, later:
I was moved [...] I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?
in both quotes victor mentions he feels he owes the creature happiness, i.e. the same "train of enjoyment" he experienced in his own childhood, and it is the feelings the creature expressed (stemming from his mistreatment by victor, but also more importantly by society as a whole; i think people tend to overinflate the importance of the creature's "abandonment" by victor in the grand scheme of things) that push victor to this idea. that is, victor pretty directly admits to the effect of his absence on creature.
Victor Frankenstein admits multiple times that him creating the creature led to multiple deaths so he’s responsible in that sense but he assumes it’s because he created a monster but in my opinion, he knows him failing as a parent/abandoning the creature is why it turned out the way that it did, he just won’t admit it, and this passage from chapter one is my prime evidence.
I was their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.
It's crazy to me how people criticise Victor for making the creature without any thought of the consequences, but then also criticise him for not going along with creating a second one after considering the potential consequences
After being given life, the creature became his own person, developing his own identity. If Victor created another one, they would also develop their own identity and it is reasonable to imagine that their values would be different and they may not want to go away with the creature, or agree to live in solitude away from humanity. I think Victor stopping to realise that shows an amount of character development that people don't really acknowledge
meant to post this the other day but it's so fascinating how victor and the creature's roles have reversed during the chase. victor seeks to find him, rather them him seeking to find victor. creator has become creation, and creation has become creator, because destruction is creation all on it's own, and he destroyed victor. the creature is the hideous other because victor made him that way, and now victor is alone and miserable because the creature made him that way. victor might've made a walking corpse, but the creature created the living dead...
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.