Dont Know If I’ve Said This All Here Yet But I See Very Often People Pointing Out Victor’s Supposedly

even though there is no explicit sexual abuse in the picture of dorian gray, the themes of manipulation and violation and insertion / imposition of another upon one's sense of self and body in the picture of dorian gray echo the themes of such abuse leading from his childhood (his grandfather who called him vile and hated him as an inherently disgusting, evil creature produced by a marriage he disapproved of) to early adulthood (two older men imposing their own will upon dorian, reducing him to just a figure of his beauty which, when it fades, will make him meaningless) to the corruption of dorian's own view of his body in the portrait. the men in his life insert themselves deeply into his relationship to himself and his body and leave him tainted, believing but also hating their views of him, trying to change his perceived fate of withering away into his 'true nature' of an ugly, vile being, but ultimately he is doomed to become that even if it was not inherently in his nature at all. he's a boy afraid to become something and that fear is reinforced by authority figures throughout his life, leading the fear to take him directly down the path to corruption anyway

”finally got my degree so now i can say im smarter/better than college dropout victor frankenstein” no you arent. victor went from being the equivalent of an aspiring astronaut studying astronomy to having the 1790s version of two PHDs in chemistry and biology and was well on his way to a third in oriental languages when he HAD to stop - literally because his brother was murdered. all during a time period where going to university was widely considered optional and/or extracurricular!

im going to reread frankenstein soon and then we'll be so back

New Frankenstein origin story just dropped

of COURSE you’re textually alive yet narratively dead. and a trans allegory.

The hyperfixation train is a-chuggin, so have some more Frankenstein sketches

I read this book in eglish class .. franking stein

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

victor frankenstein the type of guy to say “the world just wasnt ready for my ideas” and the idea was an 8-foot tall homonculus he constructed out of graverobbed body parts 

(in response to @mrbrainrot’s post here)

it feels incorrect, to me, to claim that victor views elizabeth as an accessory: while it’s tempting, i think, to view his portrayal of elizabeth as reductive (casting her as a saint, an ideal of feminine domesticity, the “angel in the house”), we must acknowledge that victor’s narration also recounts her standing in front of the corrupt court system to defend justine, speaking against the injustice of the system and attempting to fight against its verdict, critiquing 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. she is, within his own account, thoughtful, courageous, and politically aware. 

while i’m open to being proved wrong, to me, most of the “victor views elizabeth as a possession” viewpoints hinge primarily on one specific line, where victor says the following: 

“'I have a pretty present for my Victor—tomorrow he shall have it.' And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine—mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own... till death she was to be mine only."

i am hesitant to call his relationship with elizabeth straightforwardly objectifying, at least not in the flat, dehumanizing way that this quote and this interpretation often implies. the keyword here, to me, is that victor explicitly names this mindset as “childish.” he is not presenting this possessiveness as justified. it is clearly marked by the text (and victor himself) as something immature, shaped by how caroline frames elizabeth’s role rather than how victor sees her. in that sense, this passage become less a declaration of elizabeth’s status as an object to victor and more an origin for victor’s warped understanding of intimacy with elizabeth. victor also seems to outgrow this view, as the rest of the novel doesn’t support the idea that he views elizabeth merely as an object.

beyond that, my stance on whether or not there was genuine romantic sentiment between victor and elizabeth becomes a lot more muddied. i've already analyzed the way that they were groomed and the psuedo-incestuous implications of their relationship in depth (here), but this in itself does not denote a lack of romance between them. the conclusion that there could have been some sort of romantic love there even despite them seeing each other as siblings is a disturbing one, but it's one i'd argue is to an extent supported by the text, even if it is inseparable from the preordained nature of their relationship. but at the same time, i'd also argue that victor is aware of this on a subconscious level and is simultaneously repulsed by it: the only kiss in the entire book is in victor's infamous dream where elizabeth decays into caroline in his arms, which feels like a very deliberate piece of subtext.

in regard to clerval i may have to articulate my thoughts on him in a separate post as this is already long enough as it is lol.