All My Frankensteins

i agree with most of this, except one major point: victor’s motivation to find the secret of life wasn’t spurred by caroline’s death. there’s no evidence to suggest this in-text - it wasn’t about reanimation (this concept was only mentioned once in a throwaway line, and it was not regarding caroline), it was about creating new life. what he wound up doing was not really reversing death, but what was, essentially, childbirth. this is a significant detail when you consider it in the context of victor and elizabeth’s relationship - if victor’s goal was to create life, and he intentionally foregoes women (elizabeth) in this process, then is it that big of a leap to suggest he was doing so so that he wouldn’t have to perform incest?

now if we step back and take a look at the events before the creature’s creation, i really do think they saw each other as siblings - considering the context of elizabeth being adopted into the frankenstein family, elizabeth and victor referring to each other as cousins, and being in an arranged marriage to victor (both normal things in higher society but strange when paired together), and that caroline selects elizabeth specifically because she had a background similar to her own, a daughter that would be like her. then she calls elizabeth her favorite, and rears her and victor under the expectation that they are to be wed when they are older. from the age of six, victor and elizabeth, notably TOGETHER, were helping raise ernest (and later william) while both caroline and alphonse were still in the picture, described as his “constant nurses”... and if i remember correctly, at this point alphonse had retired after ernest’s birth specifically to care for his children, yet elizabeth and victor are still raising their younger siblings, treating ernest as if he were their child... and then caroline, as her literal dying wish, has elizabeth promise to marry her son and take her place in the family and help raise her other children.

it’s as if caroline grooms elizabeth into being this second version of her, which makes her dictating victor and elizabeth’s marriage to each other all the more horrible.

there’s several moments that make it clear that elizabeth and victor view each other as family, or at the very least, are romantically disinterested in each other. elizabeth bringing up in letters how she and victor as a pair is strange, giving victor several outs to their marriage, elizabeth literally hitting the nail on the head when suggesting victor considers himself honor-bound to fulfill his parent’s wishes, their hesitance on their wedding day, elizabeth referring to william (and by extension, ernest and victor) as a brother during justine’s trial, victor’s dream where he’s kissing elizabeth and then she literally turns into his mother in his arms, etc.

and before all that - there’s this constant, excessive dependence on victor for emotional support, and it started in childhood, from which he was his parents “plaything” and their “idol” and where, growing up, “[caroline’s] firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of [elizabeth and victor’s] union” and, after her death, “this expectation [would be] the consolation of [his] father.” 

so now we have victor, who his parents have been emotionally dependent on all his life, who is expected to carry on his family’s legacy, who is in an arranged marriage he doesn’t want, with someone who is his cousin/sister/acting as his mother stand-in. under all this expectation, this marriage he has literally been raised with, he doesn’t try to subvert it entirely, no, he’s been told that his family’s happiness depends on this marriage! but he does the best he could in the situation he’s been given, dodging an act of incest by performing the act of creating life by himself, by making the creature.

Let's talk about Victor...

But not in the usual way.

Warnings: Will contain some talk of Grooming and incest.

And warnings for some large spoilers for the Frankenstein novel. If you're still reading it, I do suggest not reading this post.

We discuss a lot, Victor's faults, what he could have done better and done different, ect. We are not going to be discussing that for this, for now we are putting those discussions and debates aside.

There is one large, hmm, complaint or judgement perhaps, that's always not quite sat right with me. And that's, his relationship with Elizabeth, and how it's treated as his fault. And I'm not talking about how he treats her, or what happens to Elizabeth or anything like that. I'm talking about how it's often treated like the relationship itself is his fault and he's a disgusting pig for it. When honestly...I feel he's a victim of it as well.

Now, of course, this is my interpretation of things. I know not everyone agrees or will agree with it, which is perfectly fine. This is my interpretation of something in a story that is meant to have different interpretations. This is just something I feel and I feel like is not often discussed. In fact I haven't even seen it discussed.

So, here we go.

I feel like both Victor and Elizabeth are victims and didn't really have a choice in the matter of the relationship. Yes, by the times, Victor has an advantage of being a man and Elizabeth has to be a wife and be dependent on him, I'm not saying that isn't true.

I'm talking about his mother. Caroline. I feel, in pointing the finger at Victor for the relationship with Elizabeth, his mother is often forgotten. His mother, whether you're doing the version where Elizabeth is his cousin or adopted sister, basically took Elizabeth in, and immediately decides she'd be the perfect match for her boy.

And told them that. Constantly. As they were growing up. As they were learning.

I do believe, Victor and Elizabeth loved each other, as best friends, as siblings. I don't think they were ever really allowed to think of it as anything other then romantic love though. And so that's how they accepted it. It's how his, and honestly their, mother saw it.

And then to make it worse. Caroline's death. His mother, who, when you look into the novel, really, who's death really begins Victor's physiological breakdown. What leads him to want to, really, defeat and overcome death.

On her deathbed. Her dying wish, she grabs their hands and tells Victor and Elizabeth it is her dying wish to see them wed. That she's always thought this, thought they were perfect together, and always wanted this. And please, I ask to really think on this, after all mentioned above.

We talk about when his father asks him, "Maybe you don't want to marry Elizabeth, maybe you've come to see her as a sister." And he said yes, he loves her and still wants to marry her.

Y'all. Maybe this is just my interpretation, but he had never been given a choice to think anything otherwise. His mother had never allowed anything else, had constantly shoved into their heads their relationship would be/was romantic. To the point they believed it.

Anything they felt towards each other, any affection, any love, was and had to be romantic.

After all, it was their mother, who raised them, put this into their heads as children and it was her dying wish for them to be married, so what else could it be?

Yes, it gets messy when you have to take in the time of things. That it is true, for the time, you were lucky to even just like the person you were to marry. Maybe that's what Caroline saw, saw two people that could marry, and the relationship wouldn't be horrible. But even if that was her reasoning, I don't think it makes her innocent. And I do think she greatly screwed both Elizabeth and Victor up.

Their relationship has then been put through much in adaptions. Victor gets put as a creep, sometimes outright predator to Elizabeth. The part connecting them as cousins or adoptive siblings gets cut out and they get put as the romantic couple.

Hell, look at Bride of Frankenstein. She's the beautiful, clearly all is good and Christian, humane option Victor Henry (because for some reason their names were switched) turns his back on. Which is wrong and evil and against God. And eventually, he comes back to, and they get to escape the tower, run off as the tower explores with the Monster, the Bride, and Dr. Pretorius in it. And have a happy ending. They're the romantic couple you're supposed to cheer for, as these movies set things up.

We have been made to veiw them, in many different ways. And sometimes I feel that affects how we then veiw them when looking at the novel. That's just some of the adaptions.

I do, again, think they loved each other. As best friends, as siblings.

Elizabeth deserved better. By her family, by, though I adore him, Adam himself who killed her in revenge for Victor destroying the to-be-reanimated body of his potential mate who may or may not have even liked him. By the time itself, she was born in. She got little time, and deserved better.

Victor cared for her, loved her as a sibling. If he did love anyone romantically in the novel, I do agree with, he romantically loved Henry. But believed he did love Elizabeth, and of course had to repress anything towards another man. But, that takes us on a whole other thing that can be discussed another time.

Thank you for reading all of this, my reasoning, my rambles. Again, my interpretation, but something I feel is not often talked about. In the aspect of Victor's and Elizabeth's relationship, how it came to be, how they thought of each other, I do believe, they were both victims.

my take on dorian gray. hi

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

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.

Gonna start using this victor drawing as the wolf sitting on tree meme because I swear to god I think about it all the time and I'm starting to say "victor posing" just how you say "shinji posing" as a reference to it

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.

I feel there is a way to write a sort of fix-it fic that reconciles Victor and the Creature, especially since Victor had once been willing to hear the Creature out and towards the end the Creature expresses grief and remorse over Victor’s death, but the way to do it is not simply to say “Victor isn’t afraid of yellow eyes in this one.”

faggotsteinery

get away from me

i have something to say!!! about the differences between victor and elizabeth in the way they experience/express emotion, and what that means for the themes of gender in the novel

i briefly begun (began??) to talk about this in the tags of this post by the magnificent @frankingsteinery (i wanted to add this on to the original post but this ended up being kinda long) and i would like to clarify and expand upon what was said because i theorized a bunch of stuff unsubstantiated like an idiot 😭 raving under the cut

for context here are the tags that inspired my thoughts:

i left my little analysis in the tags because i was really just spitballing on the spot and when i do that i'm usually wrong 😭 but i'd actually find it fun to substantiate some of what i said w evidence from the text

to expand on my ramblings and robin's own additions in their reblog (with brilliant quotes that i did not even consider to search for because i am quite stupid). when i try to explain exactly how elizabeth and victor have differed in their approach to an early parentification role (elizabeth moreso in being groomed to emulate her mother in role and spirit, forced to remain domestic, unworldly, and unable to even entertain self-actualization, since the moment caroline dies she is the eldest female figure in the immediate family and must assume that role of maturity) (victor moreso in the fact that he literally. made a guy when he was like 20), i find this quote from alphonse quite telling:

"...but is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance or immoderate grief? Excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society."

victor immediately dismisses this advice as being:

"...totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to hide my grief and console my friends, if remorse had not mingeled its bitterness, and terror its alarm, with my other sensations."

he acklowledges what is expected of him from society at large and actively claims himself incapable of it. he is not the reliable figure his family so desperately hoped could be upheld before they came to realize that he is really, irrevocably capricious and mentally unstable.

on the subject of the other quotes added, i think that in them we can see this shift in the family's perception of victor: they begin by expecting him to assume his prescribed role as the family's eldest man (besides alphonse cause he's old and useless) and caregiver, to be a stable and unshakeable foundation on which the family can always rely, but as victor remains on the trauma conga line and spirals into worsening mental health, the happiness of the family is reliant on victor's rapidly fluctuating states of health.

"Come, my dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth..." (side note that after this quote he immediately starts taking about caroline, a bit of a freudian slip on alphonse's part in that he conflates caroline's very existence with a comforting and reliable disposition, and elizabeth is explicitly asked to 'take over' for caroline when she dies)

at the time alphonse writes this, henry (<3) has been purposefully concealing the extent of the "nervous fever" victor has suffered; alphonse is not aware of the trauma his son has undergone and how it has changed him, and so he automatically assumes that victor, upon returning home, now older and more educated, will embrace these expectations.

"'We all... depend on you, and if you are miserable, what must be our feelings?'"

at this point of the novel, however, elizabeth knows how mentally unstable victor is, and is begging him to come back happier than he left. everyone in the family at this point is so conscious and aware of victor's poor health, and thus his explosive and outwardly demonstrative emotions affect the family very deeply. in short their dependency on him shifts from perceiving him as a source of stability to perceiving him as a source of instability.

back to my original comparison!! jesus this is all over the place thank god i'm not an academic.

to reference alphonse's first quote that i referred to. it seems to me that elizabeth, unlike vic, takes alphonse's advice in stride. contrast victor's response to alphonse's quote with this description of elizabeth:

"She indeed veiled her grief, and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life, and assumed it's duities with courage and zeal."

indeed, she demonstrates this; victor often describes her as handling her grief in silence (literal silence, but ykwim):

"...a thousand conflicting emotions rendered her mute, and she bade me a tearful, silent farewell."

"...I turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth."

in fact, the only time she comes close to being as expressive as victor is when she blames herself for the death of william, and in part her extreme reaction stems from the fact that she percives herself as having failed the duty that her mother bestowed upon her - it is unmotherly to allow such a thing to occur under her watchful, feminine eye.

even in childhood they had a very stark difference in temperament, elizabeth's more traditionally and overtly masculine:

"Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition, but, with all my ardor, I was capable of a more intense application..."

and, especially for a female character, she defies the will of her father several times:

"At first I attempted to prevent her, but she persisted, and entering the room where it lay..."

"Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my cousin. My father wished her not to go..."

all this considered, i don't think it's much of a stretch to say that while it should be vic's role, elizabeth is the "man of the house" (a sexist idea in its own right, but im communicating this in terms i think mary shelley might have intended).

tldr i just think this is such a fascinating exploration of family dynamics in frankenstein, and a brilliant portrayal of two opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to people dealing with the undue parental and familial responsibilities they are made to uphold in youth. the lack of academic attention these themes have attracted is absolutely bonkers to me. anyway elizabeth the girlboss and victor the malewife <3

”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!