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The Creature - Blog Posts
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.
epic rap battles of history. miserable nineteen year old who is intellectually gifted but psychologically aberrant and has never been told ‘no’ losing everything he has because he dealt with consequences that neither he nor any person could ever fully comprehend through complete avoidance and dissociation after being catalyzed by grief and motivated by insatiable curiosity, deadly obsession, and painfully human pride to commit a horrific crime against nature without knowing exactly what he was getting into. versus miserable corpse man who has been abandoned by his creator, the closest thing he has to a god and his only chance at salvation, and despised by both said creator and society as a whole, desperate to experience the world even if his existence within it is unwilling and strange, yet perpetually separated from it, isolated and ultimately doomed by circumstances outside of his control, a being who never really had a chance in the first place
i’ve seen the “monsters aren’t born they’re created” line of reasoning applied quite a few times in defense of the creature, wherein creature was inherently good-hearted but turned into a monster via victor’s “abandonment” and his subsequent abusive treatment by other humans, but this logic is so scarcely applied to victor. victor, to me, is often sympathetic for the same reasons as the creature, it’s just those reasons are not as blatantly obvious and require reading in-between the lines of victor’s narration a bit more. most “victor was evil and bad” or even some “victor was unsympathetic” arguments tend to fall through when you flip the same premise onto victor: if monsters are created, than who created victor frankenstein?
i can be your angle...or yuor devil
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.
ancient edit from forever ago im releasing into the world
if victor is the creature's literal father, then by extension the female creature would have been the creature's literal sister. by choosing to break his promise and destroy the bride, victor is breaking the cycle of abuse by refusing to comply to the demand that he dictate a marriage between siblings, like his mother did to him and elizabeth.
i disagree: victor doesnt seem very avoidant to me. he confronts his problems several times and attempts to reach out to others in order to correct its consequences, particularly if we are viewing the creature as the manifestation of these emotions. but when those he looks onto for support fail him (often through no fault of their own - there really is no good outcome), he is forced to take matters into his own hands, even when he is often physically or mentally unable to do so. but instead of ignoring the issue or giving up, he DOES confront it.
the sole exception to this is after his recovery at ingolstadt - notably after a period of acute mental stress and physical illness - where he chooses to pretend the creature he made a year ago doesnt exist and learns oriental language with henry instead. that is definitely avoidant behavior (but for all victor knows the creature ran off in the forest and died by now, he could be anywhere. what’s he supposed to do?).
side note: “he should have confronted what he did with the creature and told someone, told Clerval” victor DID. he rambled about the creature to henry “incessantly” during his illness, to no avail - henry either dismisses it as the offspring of his delirium or simply does not press further. this experience (and similar ones he would have afterwards, when he attempts to reach out again) continue to reinforce to victor that he CANT rely on others for support in this regard, because they wont believe him, and thus he has to take matters into his own hands.
however id argue when the consequences come knocking, he still immediately takes action: when william is murdered he returns home to geneva and tells his family he knows the murderer, who dismiss him and so now victor is forced to rely on the justice of the court. when this falls through as justine is unfairly trialed and executed, victor resolves to confront the creature himself and is ready to throw hands.
when they come to an agreement, victor commits to creating a bride for the creature knowing the toll it took on his physical and mental health the first time, and only backs out after realizing it was improbable and nothing would hold the og creature and second creature accountable to the promise and he could just be increasing their potential for violence 2x (there are more complex psychological reasonings behind this as well-namely victor breaking the cycle of abuse-however that’s for another time). either how, risking his health to create a female creature should never have been considered a viable option, and backing out in such an extreme case i wouldnt consider avoidance behavior - it shouldnt be an expectation in the first place.
afterwards, when henry is killed and victor is released from prison, he chooses to wed elizabeth because he believes the consequence will be either his own life or the creature’s. he knows by marrying elizabeth he will ignite the creature’s rage and murderous tendencies (for him, not elizabeth, victor believes) and instead of avoiding this, either by delaying the marriage or other means, he prepares for this event by arming himself and deciding to kill the creature or die trying, thus ending everything once and for all. when elizabeth is inevitably murdered instead, victor goes to the magistrate for support and tells him everything, who of course does not believe him because what he’s got to say is so improbable - particularly given his history of psychotic illness and believed “madness” - and again victor chooses to face the issue head-on and pursues the creature himself, literally to his own death.
of course, he doesn’t directly address his other emotional issues, but if, like you said, the creature is a physical representation of victor’s despair and guilt and shame, and when everybody refuses to take him seriously or help when victor begins to reach out about the 8-foot homunculus actively threatening to murder his entire family, then of course he can’t begin to tackle the emotional complexities of his other feelings underneath - that is, his lack of desire to marry elizabeth, his remaining relationship with ernest, etc.
so im of the opinion that victor was by in large not avoidant of his problems/feelings, but he’s seen this way simply because he was ineffectual: i dont think he COULD fix his life, whether he had the fight to do so or not - because despite his efforts, there was simply nothing he could really do given the circumstances he was dealt. he was doomed from the beginning. and that’s really a more disturbing conclusion here - because we are condemning victor for things he could not have possibly changed.
This is not an attack on you at ALL I’m sorry for moving this to it’s own post I just have Opinions™️ and I need be weird about this book rq I’ll tag you anyway in case you’re interested like at all in my dumb little opinion @adrianfridge-main
I just woke up but DISAGREED Victor’s complaining was completely and utterly justified tbh (bro fucked up astronomically big time and as a result his entire family is dead, I think he’s earned the right to be in despair), Victor’s biggest flaw was the fact he stitched together a mass of corpses and brought it to life and then told nobody, Victor’s biggest flaw is avoidance – and part of that is understandable, it’s a common trauma response, but Victor should have been open about how he felt about Elizabeth, he should have worked through his feelings about his family and expressed them, he should have confronted what he did with the creature and told someone, told Clerval, Victor’s biggest flaw isn’t that he’s in despair, it’s that he rarely explains that despair to others – and it’s understandable why he doesn’t, but it’s still wrong, because that’s how he hurts people.
He keeps parts of himself hidden – as arguably represented by the creature himself. He begins to isolate himself for really the first time, he has a lot of space away from people he’s been around his entire life for really the first time, and it’s fairly safe to say that psychological things begin to build up, as he builds the creature, almost represented by him – whatever interpretation you have of these knew-found realisations can greatly vary depending on the reading of the book you have, but personally I think it’s mostly how he feels about himself and his family.
I don’t think Victor wanted to marry Elizabeth at all – and I’ll probably make a whole catch-all rant on that point soon enough, but I think once he actually begins to get some time in isolation to think about things, he starts thinking about his mother, he starts thinking about Elizabeth, he starts considering all these complicated feelings, that he genuinely does love his mother, but that she’s effectively forcing him into something he doesn’t want to do at all, surely she’d understand if he just explained – but she’s dead, he can’t explain, it’s too late for that. Would she have accepted his explanations in the first place, or would he have disappointed her? This was his mother’s only dying wish, the last thing she left to him, the last thing he had to remember her by – and I do believe Victor genuinely loved his mother, even if I’m also absolutely of the opinion that she was a terrible person. Instead of coming to a conclusion about this, Victor spirals, it builds up, he tells no-one – I don’t believe he would’ve told Henry – and this coincides with the creation of the creature. His dead mother’s final wish being the definitive thing haunting him, and the representation of his spiral and all of his emotions about that being a mass of sentient corpses – seems accurate.
Following this argument, Victor sees Clerval again after all those years, and he collapses from the weight of it all – he rants about it vaguely, but he hides it, and he continues to do so, ignoring it, and that’s when it slowly begins to become harmful, purposefully picking off the people he loves and hurting them.
It’s important to remember still, of course, that the monster isn’t metaphorical, he is real – it’s just that a lot of heights of Victor’s despair and tendency to spiral into his own thoughts coincide well with the “building” of the creature, or with him becoming more vocally demanding of Victor or harmful to his loved ones, so he tends to be a pretty good approximation for a physical representation of Frankenstein’s mental state and guilt. And effectively, Frankenstein desperately trying to hide the creature, fumbling with promises to make further mistakes to push him away only to come to the realisation that they’re wrong, but still having to deal with the consequences of them, instead of just from the start being open and honest, even if that honestly was “I need some time to think, and I don’t know how I feel right now.” – that’s his biggest flaw. And the people Victor hurts is really best represented through Elizabeth herself – I hold the very very strong opinion that Victor and Elizabeth are both victims of what was pretty basically just grooming, and again, avoidance is a very common trauma response, but Elizabeth tried to confront Victor on multiple occasions, sending that letter asking about how he feels about the marriage, saying it doesn’t need to happen if he doesn’t want it to – instead he misinterprets this as his poor dear cousin in despair second-guessing his affections for her, (very likely because of things his mother probably told him as a child), and decides to “put her mind at ease” by telling her that he will marry her, despite his actions saying completely otherwise and Elizabeth herself pretty openly not really wanting to marry him.
He’s gone through so much at this point, feels himself responsible for so many deaths, and decides the final thing he needs to do before he dies is not to be a disgrace to his parents as well, or any more of a disgrace than he already is, in his eyes.
And I also definitely have a queer reading of the novel – I genuinely do really hold to the interpretation of Frankenstein and Clerval’s relationship being romantic, and from there and concerning the creation of the bride, Henry really is effectively murdered as a punishment for Victor doubting the role given to him – almost like his doubts and guilt, as embodied by the creature, overwhelm him in that way. “Ah! my father, do not remain in this wretched country; take me where I may forget myself, my existence, and all the world.” He’s pushing away the memory of Clerval’s death, repressing it, avoiding it, and that is extremely important for how he shifts his tone with Elizabeth and puts up that fake demeanour of wanting to marry her, because he thinks it’ll make her happy even though both of them describe dreading the wedding, even given the context for Victor and even by Elizabeth, who doesn’t know what he dreads – in order to forget Clerval, he assigns himself to the role given to him as a child by marrying Elizabeth and gives up whatever he hope he had.
All possibly discouraged from Clerval being murdered as a response to Victor refusing to finish the Bride and subject her to the same fate as him and Elizabeth to the Creature, a pact made without her knowledge or consent, an arranged marriage. Where has spiting that tradition led him? Where has him standing up to the shroud of his mother’s dying wishes, hanging over him the entire novel thus far, led him, by refusing to force the Bride into an arranged marriage with the Creature, as he was with Elizabeth? To the death of the one man he truly loved. So, can at least “make his dear cousin happy” and not die spiting the one thing he was meant to do – make his mother proud from beyond the grave by marrying Elizabeth.
And even then, adding to my argument of the creature being a physical embodiment of Frankenstein‘s guilt and dread – that building tension approaching the wedding, Victor being convinced the creature is going to kill him, but he kills Elizabeth – that’s a metaphor if I’ve ever seen it.
Even on the subject of grieving Clerval, Victor won’t sort his feelings, he spirals and tries so desperately to avoid them. “We had resolved not to go to London, but to cross the country to Portsmouth, and thence to embark for Havre. I preferred this plan principally because I dreaded to see again those places in which I had enjoyed a few moments of tranquillity with my beloved Clerval. I thought with horror of seeing again those persons whom we had been accustomed to visit together, and who might make inquiries concerning an event.”
I wonder what would happen if he did go through London, if he did meet those people again. Would things have turned out differently? Would he finally have been given a sense of comfort and clarity through mutual grief, as nobody so far since Henry’s death and for the rest of the book, except the creature, ironically, has grieved for Clerval except for Frankenstein. If he met people who took as fondly to Clerval as he did, at least on meeting him briefly, who would have sympathy towards Victor – would he finally have that space to grieve for him in a healthy way, to be comforted by people who at least vaguely understand a fraction of his anguish?
But he doesn’t, and instead he avoids the subject – confining himself to his union with Elizabeth, and hurting her because of that.
And even to his grave, Frankenstein doesn’t stop to consider his feelings properly, and by that I mean he doesn’t sort them with anyone, he doesn’t admit the dread he feels surrounding his family and his late wife, he doesn’t stay with Ernest and talk through things with him, bonding to his last remaining family member in his grief – instead he spirals again, chasing the monster and telling no one, except for Walton. And even then, he doesn’t discuss, he monologues – he doesn’t talk through his emotions with a trusted friend, he “tells his story” to an eager man who is mostly overwhelmingly curious, rather than genuinely concerned.
Victor Frankenstein’s biggest flaw is not that he complains. It isn’t that he’s in despair – it’s that he won’t articulate that despair properly. It’s that he avoids it and keeps it hidden out of pain, but he shouldn’t. Because the subject of that despair actively effects the people around him, and by extension, his despair actively effects the people around him. Elizabeth is left hanging by a man who doesn’t truly love her and won’t talk to her, forcing her into a marriage she doesn’t really want out of duty. The creature is cast aside and abandoned, viewed mostly by Victor as a representation of his guilt and shame, of his worst mistakes, although he expresses feeling pity for it fairly often, he still hides and shuns it, fearing it. Clerval is murdered as a representation of that hope for a better future, the one man who ever truly loved him being snatched away, and instead of standing his ground, coming to the conclusion that he won’t abide by his mother’s wishes, that he was right in his destruction of the bride, grieving Clerval with those people in London and using his death as a catalyst to not let it happen again, perhaps then meeting Walton at a later date if he chose to stay in England or otherwise by chance under different circumstances, writing to Elizabeth telling her his true feelings and confronting the creature properly, pulling a Christine Daaé there except like. Parentally instead of romantically. and showing his creation sympathy and compassion rather than just feeling it, and being open about everything; instead of that, Victor spirals, and Victor hurts everyone left.
And it’s understandable why he does – it’s realistic. The hero doesn’t always know exactly what to do and magically save the day by making all the right decisions – people don’t know what do do or how to make all the right decisions. Victor isn’t just complaining “woe-is-me” style, Victor is in genuine severe psychological torment and distress, and his actions reflect that. He is, to an extent, a victim of circumstance – and his circumstances haven’t made things easy for him. In his grief over Clerval, he’s led back to Geneva by his father instead of through London, and follows easily. He’s forced into a situation where he has to marry his cousin by his mother, since young childhood. When he tries to be assertive in what he wants, he’s punished for it every time. In real life, people don’t fix their situation easily like a superhero and pull themselves on their feet like that. They don’t get over everything that’s ever happened to them easily. They need space – and Frankenstein did not have space. If he wanted to fix his life, he would have had to actively fight for it. And he didn’t have any fight left. He didn’t want to live. He didn’t have any idea of what to do next. He didn’t see a future. Any time he tried to fight against what was expected of him, he was punished for it, so now that his life was effectively over, all he wanted to do was assign himself to the roles he was “meant” to perform, and not disappoint his family.
But it’s still a flaw, and it still hurts people. Victor was still in the wrong for what he did. For avoiding everything, for building the creature to begin with, that was Victor’s fault. But it’s understandable why he does what he does, and he’s a very sympathetic character because of that.
Me waking up to immediately write an entire Frankenstein essay I shit you not I’m still in bed finishing this I literally just woke up and started typing half asleep until I finished it (haha funny Nosferatu reference):
[DNI if: approx. 8 foot tall, yellow skin, shriveled complexion, straight black lips, flowing hair, teeth of a pearly whiteness, watery eyes] [TW: mentioned graverobbing, unethical science, parental abandonment, child death, murder]
she franken on my stein till i beautiful! great god! his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
in all of the frankenstein analysis ive read here, be it you interpret the creature as ugly or only uncanny valley or just a baby with scary eyes, ive not once seen someone mention this line, just after the creature’s awakening:
like?? this should be pivotal, shouldn’t it? that victor acknowledged that the creature was ugly before he brought him to life?
say what you will about victor, but upon victor and the creature’s first real meeting, note that victor first sympathizes with the creature by discerning his feelings, before he makes any remark on his physical appearance:
a series of unfortunate events
IDontHaveAFavoriteStickfigure
little mango creature :)
Neoalchemy at its finest: Witch’s cauldron?
(The line with sparkles is nearly quoted from Frankenstein: The New Musical - My Creation)
(I love that musical)
Henry Jekyll Sings Prince Ali
The Glass Scientists - Picrew.me
I made some TGS Picrews!
It is a rather "modern au" due to the clothing. Some turned out better than others... the hair was the most difficult the majority of the time
Maybe I'll make Lucys Spouses, the Lodgers or some other side characters in the future
I used this site
Men will complain about how women don't want them because of their looks and then women (myself included) go insane over a literal corpse who canonically smells terrible
the way i need the creature from lisa frankenstein should be studied
PLEASE THIS IS SO CUTE
I need more of lisa and the creature hanging out and being casual. I love them so much!
Lisa Frankenstein deleted scene #2
Can we please talk about how amazing the movie posters for lisa frankenstein are
Like hello?
They absolutely exude the 80s camp romance slasher vibes they needed to give
NO NOTES they're so pretty, I want all of these on my walls so I can fall asleep looking at them, they all share a cohesive color scheme and I just love the title fonts!!!!!
I love that he's called the creature because it's like yes. That's him. That's the one. That's the creature. That little dead guy.
Lisa's tombstone is so important to me. FIRST the creature carved "Beloved Wife" into it so that she would be loved in death like he wasn't- having "unmarried" carved into his own
Then he left flowers for her, copious amounts of them, even though he brought her back and can now tell her how much he loves her, he still leaves flowers for her grave ( these also could have been left before he brought her back but I choose to believe he still leaves flowers)
And lastly their wedding peach rings which is just so cute, they were one of my favorite details of the movie and the fact that he left them there on her grave is so sweet!!
Anyways this is my favorite movie ever if you couldn't tell, I love it so much!!!
I want what they have sooooo bad. He's so silly and pathetic lover boy and she's the hot girlboss of everyone's dreams