Fascinating Trend I’ve Noticed From Lurking In Frankenstein-related Tags:

when referring to the cycle of abuse i am mostly talking about the pseudo-incestous relationships within the frankenstein family, specifically between alphonse and caroline and victor and elizabeth. while i need to make a catch-all post explaining it all at once, there’s quite a bit of analysis regarding the topic sprinkled around my blog, specifically here and here and here. though again its something i need to elaborate on, i speak a little bit on why and how victor’s perception of his own childhood is so idealized here, which is why his idealistic narration regarding his parents (the passages you pointed out) are so different from my interpretation of his childhood. essentially, caroline was groomed by alphonse (her father figure replacement of sorts) into becoming his wife. caroline then perpetuates her own abusive situation with her children by grooming elizabeth into a second version of herself, and then dictating her marriage to victor (who is all but her biological sibling) so that, like her mother before her, elizabeths shifts from a familial role to a wife role with the same person. it’s not explicit that they see each other as siblings but there’s an egregious amount of subtext suggesting they do. also they are actually blood related in the 1818 version, but call each other cousins in both versions, and elizabeth refers to victor’s siblings as her brothers. also never apologize there are no stupid questions

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?

victor, on being seen as mad:

happy walton expedition day to all who celebrate! ⚓️

you won't fucking believe this

i did some precursory reading on this and i think you may find priscilla wakefield's introduction to botany interesting; it was written in 1796, around the time victor would have died in the novel. i also skimmed anna sagal's botanical entanglements, but the scope of it was in all honestly beyond me.

in regard to woman's education with botany, i came back with a lot of conflicting information. there's a few things in wakefield's introduction that align with what you suggested, and, in general, the study of science, and by extension, botany, was inherently linked with the study of religion and of "the natural order of things." in regards to the 1800s like you were saying, i did find a source saying that it started to be considered a modern science around 1830s, thus a serious occupation for men, and as a result women's status in the field began to decline; mary shelley would have had written frankenstein before this turning point.

however, i couldn't find anything about women being taught botany specifically during the late 1700s; i think it's unlikely women would have had any sort of formal education in botany (and etc), because while the frankensteins were rather radical in their approach to education, intense study was still seen as unfeminine and/or it was thought that it was beyond the intellectual capacities of women to study and learn at a profound level. but! some sources said that botany was an alternative way of studying natural history that would allow a person to subtly defy the (social) limits of woman’s intellectual practice and education, which i believe is very in character for elizabeth. many botanists were also illustrators and painters, like elizabeth!

Something very cool I realized about Elizabeth Lavenza-Frankenstein

So, this is backed up with some pretty light research so please correct me if I’m wrong, but just know this is based on something an actual historian told me.

So, apparently back in the 1800s, young women would be taught botany in order to educate them about the natural order of things. It was meant to teach them how God created the earth to be. It was a branch of science women (specifically upper class women, like Elizabeth) thrived in.

In Frankenstein, Elizabeth is meant to be the model of a young upper-class women. She engages in the natural sciences because she knows the natural order of things, and how Hod intended the world to work. This is in contrast to Victor, who wants to defy God and take his powers for himself. Victor wants to disturb the natural order of the world, and Elizabeth wants to preserve it.

victor describing himself as “always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature” and then a few chapters later saying "[henry] was a being formed in the very poetry of nature". 🤨🤨 i know what you are

yes victor is an unreliable narrator, and yes we should take this into consideration when we are analyzing the plot and his character and actions. howEVER he is just one of three unreliable narrators, and cherry-picking and dismissing or discrediting whatever victor says when it suits your argument is just plain silly. you could just as easily apply that same logic to the creature, or to walton, and at that point why believe anything anyone says in the novel in the first place? of course there’s inconsistencies in a narration recounted years after these events took place, and of course it is colored by moments of bias where the truth or level of exaggeration of his statements are debatable, and analyzing these moments can be interesting and important! but there comes a point where you have to suspend disbelief and take things that are said at face value. else you wind up picking apart throwaway lines, or quotes taken out of context, and your argument just becomes nitpicky and unfounded, particular in a book that is already filled with plot holes/inconsistencies. give this man some grace

reviews for the name victor

i am thinking about how victor exists in a liminal space where he is expected to embody masculinity yet is repeatedly treated as something other than a man: he is caught between expectations and identity, unable to fully claim the masculinity he reaches for (or at the very least, is expected to reach for) yet not quite conforming to traditional femininity either. his existence is marked by contradiction: he outwardly pursues male-coded ambition and authority, yet is consistently denied the recognition, respect, and autonomy afforded to men. at the same time, he is subjected to treatment that mirrors the historical oppression of women, but without ever being fully aligned with femininity.

yet ultimately he does not belong to either category and instead oscillates between them, unable to find stability in one or the other, because he is both mother and father and simultaneously neither, a juxtaposition reinforced by his own method of creation. his horror at the creature’s birth mirrors a crisis of self--he has created something neither fully human nor entirely monstrous but an awkward inbetween, just as he himself does not fit neatly into the rigid constructs of gender that society demands

victor’s narrative, then, can be read as an exploration of dysphoria--not necessarily in the modern sense, but in the broader, existential discomfort of being forced into roles that do not align with one’s internal reality. his attempts to assert control, whether over life, death, or his own identity, continually fail because the world refuses to see him as he sees himself.

all this to say. victor nonbinary

soft jazz music plays as the love of walton’s life enters on-stage, the world goes all pink and slo-mo and dreamy. record scratch, pans to victor frankenstein coughing up a hairball