What Do You Think Of Robert Walton? I Love That Silly Sailor Very Dearly And In One Of Your Post You

im fgonna say it. victor wasn’t in the wrong for not taking care of creature 

*jesse pinkman voice* not my house man not my house

imagine jekyll and hyde but werewolf style. with a twist. jekyll is a sheep/ram that transforms into hyde (wolf). something something wolf in sheeps clothing metaphor. is this anything

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😋 this strain is called demian (1919) it'll have you zoinked outta your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever i don't feel shit

5 minutes later: the bird fights its way out of the egg. the egg is the world. who would be born must first destroy a world. the bird flies to god

my buddy emil, pacing: abraxas is lying to us

Sappy do you remember what the bad take about Frankenstein and Mary Shelley was please spill

found the post. to be fair to them. not the most egregious thing said on this post, but they did endorse the rest of it so.

ignoring "horny frat boys" being an insane way to describe percy, byron, and polidori, not to mention poor fucking claire lmao. theres a pervasive issue of people really wanting mary shelley's life and career to be a story of a woman being greatly underestimated and silenced by her (male) peers but persevering nonetheless and this idea is generally pushed in popular culture and by some ill informed biographers to the point that it is just no longer reflective of her actual experiences. i think people forget a lot that mary shelley existed in radical circles that, while not devoid of misogyny, had moved past the idea that women shouldn't have opinions and be writing and have lives outside of their relationships with men and who certainly were not discouraging her from pursuing a career in writing. she was deeply admired for being the daughter of wollstonecraft and godwin and then as a writer in her own right, and i think its sad that this idea that she was discouraged from pursuing writing by the men in her life, especially by her husband, is so pervasive because one of the most interesting things about her social group to me is the creative relationships built among them. people joke a lot that percy shelley is just remembered as the wife of the author of frankenstien as a diss on him but everything he is on record saying about her work implies that he would be fucking honored. they had a deep creative partnership and mutual admiration for one another's work that was much stronger than even their romantic relationship and its deeply frustrating how that is often disregarded and put down because people are so fixated on this stereotype of how they think 19th century women should exist that they dont let themselves engage with what her life was actually like.

also i dont even fucking like polidori but why are we acting like he didn't as part of this competition LITERALLY invent the modern vampire. like hello.

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 don’t think alphonse is necessarily passing down some sort of generational trauma onto his children (to me, the pattern of perpetuating their own abuse onto their children is much more present with caroline, through elizabeth and victor)—but rather he’s imparting the values of a upper-class swiss-christian georgian society that his gender, race, religion, career, social class, etc. dictate. 

what’s interesting, from this angle, is the significance of victor failing to conform and uphold these traditional masculine values: victor was very emotionally demonstrative, and frankenstein was written during a turning point in history where upper-class men who had “nervous” senses/feelings were beginning to be seen as effete instead of stylish (during the romantic era they used to be thought fashionable because they were seen as more in-touch with their senses and with nature then the lower-class). during the creation process, victor describes being “oppressed every night by a slow fever” and becoming “nervous to a most painful degree” (1831), among other hysteric symptoms, which was only attributed to females during the time period. victor himself acknowledges this, when in the same passage he describes himself as being “timid as a love-sick girl” (1823).

because of how the gender switch is able to function within science fiction, victor’s narrative is a traditionally female one synthesized through a male narrator, and shelley is able to disguise themes that would have otherwise been met with affront had they been more blatant. when considering this in the context of the creature's birth, victor is essentially a teenager pregnant out of wedlock alienated from his family in a foreign country–much like mary shelley herself–yet in the end, shelley demonstrates that even being male does not help him, because when it boils down to it he is still a single parent without support. victor also fails to uphold his family’s paternal legacy as syndics and judges, pursuing his passion of natural philosophy/alchemy instead to the disapproval of his father, which he is punished for, as it ultimately leads to the creation of the creature and victor’s subsequent downfall.

i’ve established the link between being outwardly emotional and equating this with femininity (which, if i haven’t made clear, i inherently disagree with btw), but i wanted to acknowledge its consequences for victor. when victor fails to suppress the emotion and grief that alphonse tries to encourage victor to suck up, after the death of clerval, this is mistaken for guilt and he faces months of imprisonment. he is also confined in a mental institution when he appears mad. generally, when being emotional he is disbelieved and not taken seriously, for example during his ramblings to henry when ill at ingolstadt, which were never acknowledged, or when telling the magistrate about the situation and trying to get them to pursue the creature. it very much feels like the way women’s emotions weren't (and aren’t) taken seriously and are undermined, were seen as melodramatic, exaggerated, inferior, etc. this forces victor to take matters into his own hands several times–agreeing to make the female creature after justine’s trial (which ultimately leads to what is essentially abortion), deciding to pursue the creature himself after the magistrate disbelieved him, etc. which always resulted in victor putting himself in situations that were dangerous and risked his life.

we’ve spoken pretty extensively in DMs on how love is conditional amongst the frankensteins, so i won’t reiterate all of that here, but generally, much of alphonse’s characterization feels like a reflection of godwin’s beliefs, particularly his ideas on how grief should be thought about and handled. godwin says this in a letter to mary after her son william (shelley)’s death:

this letter pretty directly parallels a conversation alphonse has with victor after william (frankenstein)’s death:

to me, this recontextualizes a lot of victor and alphonse’s interactions, particularly when viewing victor’s narrative as a feminine/maternal one and, in part, as influenced by shelley's own experiences as a woman, daughter and mother. it also feels significant, then, to point out that shelley chose to dedicate frankenstein to godwin.

It's interesting how the second sentence victor starts the story with is "My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics" and while i always focused on the effect it has on, for example, victor; trying to see the life of alphonse is also interesting in the way we can observe his trauma leaking out into his parenting methods and attitude towards his kids and wife.

Like,

-It is said they have a long history with being important and engaged in country's business. And as we see Alphonsa followed it, (and i highly suspect even when he sent victor to college he still expected him to take over this position later on), probably not having much of a choice either. It was all passed down, and even the character of this job is being passed down too. For example, traits fitting this job - responsibilities/brain over feelings. A sense of duty that follows them everywhere. Love isn't unconditional, it's a duty, as well as everything else they do.

It seems like he's just passing down the generational trauma.

Another instances where his bad experiences are being reflected in his behavior towards victor and others is also seen here:

-His dearest friend suddenly disappeared. Turns out he hid because of hurt pride of losing his fortune, simultaneously almost destroying his daughter's life bc of that as well as his own. and Alphonse felt betrayed that this false pride was more important than their friendship = notice how Alphonse assumes the reason for victor's misery is a false pride. And desperatively wants to keep his family in close-circle, so they won't leave each other. And him.

-He looked for the friend for a long time without stopping, but in the end was disappointed. "But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes; but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the mean time he hoped to procure some respectable imployment in a merchant’s house. The interval was consequently spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling, when he had leisure for reflection; and at length it took so fast hold of his mind, that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion." = notice how he always thinks despair is useless and leads to even worse consequences, so, feeling things is BAD.

-After making a big deal out of loving and finding the friend, the moment he actually sees him dead, instead of thinking about that or even mentioning alphonse was sad or smth, theres not a single sentence about alphonse's reaction or even of that friend anymore, instead all attention drifts to beautiful poor Caroline and suddenly it's a story about saving her. Everything got romantized. = Obviously, the romantization of grief and suffering was very ingrained in Victor's whole family. It probably came from Alphonse and his ancestors too.

- It's also said in 1818 ver that alphonse really loved his sister (the mother of elizabeth) and she abandoned him (cut him off).

"for some years my father had very little communication with her."

= Now remember alphonse's later words and lessons about how cutting your family off means you are neglecting yourself and your other duties etc.

So yeak, Idk I just love how Frankenstein is also about generational trauma and people who didn't process their feelings ruining their kids' lifes. (and don't get me started on Caroline.)

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.

Me checking the Victor Frankenstein tag every 2 hours as if expecting the tag of the most hated and mischaracterized character of a 200 year old novel to suddenly blow up with content

i mentioned victor's delusions in brief previously (here), but because of the inherent complexity (and almost contradictory aspect) of their nature i decided it warranted its own post!

victor, alongside other psychotic symptoms, experiences delusions of guilt and persecution. a delusion is an involuntary belief that isn't rooted in logic or evidence; a person experiencing a delusion is fixed in their belief, and they can't stop believing it even if they know it isn't true and/or despite contrary evidence.

while victor's delusions–specifically regarding those that revolve around the creature–by in large turn out to actually be true, i.e. the creature actually harmed his family and victor by extension, during the point in the novel when he was experiencing them, he has no evidence to suggest that this was the case, and within the context of the rest of his symptoms, they'd still be considered delusional ideas.

for a variety of reasons, i'm still on the fence on whether i'd categorize victor's mania and grandiosity during the creation process as constituting delusions of grandeur. and to what extent is this sense of grandiosity justified, because he DID discover the secret of life itself… does that not almost warrant the feeling of being superiorly intelligent, this sense of infallibly, and the belief that they should be lauded for their achievements, in almost anyone who could have made the same discovery? it's tricky because i’m not sure if i just have an aversion to the "victor had grandiose delusions during the creation process" take simply because the vast, vast majority of those who make that argument also make the argument that delusion of grandeur = arrogance = evil = victor sucks (and that line of thinking is a whole separate can of worms in of itself…), or if i actually don’t wholly agree with it; for this reason i won’t touch on this here yet

with that out of the way–

like i’ve stated before, victor’s psychotic breaks are either triggered by the stress of the creation process or the death of one of his loved ones. this results in delusions of persecution, which is defined as when the affected person believes that harm is going to occur to oneself or those close to them by a persecutor, in this case the creature, despite a clear lack of evidence. initially, this starts with paranoia:

“Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become…”

“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet”

this paranoia develops into a delusion as victor’s belief that the creature means him harm, despite having nothing to support this idea, becomes fixed. this comes to a head after the creature’s animation: 

“I beheld the wretch…He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs…where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life”

“I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on”

delusions can often feel like a sudden truth (the false belief) has been revealed to you. victor himself notes this sudden, extreme shift in perspective within himself:

“...dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!”

as victor recovers physically, this delusion becomes less present as the acute phase ends, and victor’s fears regarding the creature fade into the background as he enters the recovery phase. he stays in this manner until psychosis is again triggered by the stressor of william’s murder–then, victor’s delusion of persecution returns. however, this time, he believes the creature is not only going to harm himself, but was the murderer of william. once more, this starts with paranoia:

“Fear overcame me; I dared no advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them…The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings.”

and then develops into a fixed belief:

“I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch…Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth… He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact.”

while it turned out that he was actually correct in this assumption, what’s important to emphasize here is that victor has absolutely ZERO proof that the creature was involved with the murder of william, apart from seeing a shady-looking outline outside of geneva after walking in the rain all night. victor is not thinking clearly here, which he himself acknowledges in a phenomenon known as double book-keeping. double book-keeping refers to a mental process where an individual maintains two conflicting beliefs or realities simultaneously--where a person might experience delusions or hallucinations while still having moments of awareness that these perceptions are not grounded in reality. here, victor holds two realities (believing in a delusion while being aware that this belief would not be shared by others):

” My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity…”

and, in fact, the only evidence he has is (seemingly) proof to the contrary i.e. the locket found in justine’s pocket. yet victor holds this belief with the intense conviction characteristic of delusions, as well as the incorrigibility of a delusion, as he’s continually resistant to his family’s logical counterarguments, as ernest recounts the events to victor upon his return home:

“This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied earnestly, “You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor, good Justine, is innocent.”

he goes on to make the same assertion to his father and elizabeth, without once questioning the validity of his previous belief. 

victor develops delusions of guilt surrounding the trial of justine, the delusional belief of one's personal guilt for an event, real or imagined–it is an extreme and unwarranted feeling of remorse or guilt that someone has done something terrible. people with delusions of guilt may also believe they are "evil" or have committed an "unpardonable" sin and deserve to be punished forever. despite having no hand in the results of the trial, and again, no proof that the creature was even involved, victor is convinced of his guilt to the point of agony. for example:

”My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the dæmon who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? … The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.”

”During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison room, where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony…But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation.”

  The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind… I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.

delusions of guilt are often accompanied by low self-esteem, depression, and sometimes suicide (attempts); victor experiences all of these following the trial. this delusion is maintained throughout the rest of the novel.

lastly, during the chase at the arctic and on walton’s ship, victor experiences delusions surrounding his family. in his final attempt to hold onto those he lost, victor becomse unable to distinguish between reality and the delusions that sustain him:

"During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country… I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. What agonising fondness did I feel for them! How did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived!...I pursued my path towards the destruction of the dæmon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul."

Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world."

ultimately victor's delusions evolve throughout the novel; what starts as paranoia becomes a fixed belief that the creature means to harm him and his family, which eventually develops into a certainty that he's responsible for the deaths of his loved ones. by the time he reaches the arctic, he clings to delusions of his family still being alive and that they're talking to him.

i'll probably make yet another post dissecting what this all means in context, i.e. like avo said; the implications of the treatment of victor as a character due to these symptoms of a "weird" "scary" illness... buuuut. again. another time!