I Want To Preface This With This Is All Courtesy Of @dykensteinery's Genius And Not My Own, I Am Merely

imagine: victor drawing a portrait of henry during their studying-oriental-languages-together arc (i think he'd be good at art from practice during anatomical studies) and midway through henry glances up at him and victor goes “i’m not doing this for you. i’m doing this to deconstruct the planes of the face, and using it to further my studies” but the whole time he’s swooning and gets to stare at him unabashedly under the guise of drawing

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | WISHBONE CLASSICS FRANKENSTEIN, Micheal Burgan | THE ROOM WHERE THE CORPSE LAY, Bernie Wrightson | FRANKENSTEIN, Alexander Utz | FRANKENSTEIN, Director Kevin Connor | THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, Nicole Mello | FRANKENSTEIN, Deborah Tempest | | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley.

victor's grief for henry

In switzerland straight up frankin’ it and by “it” lets jusst say… my stein

all the anti-abortion votes are crazy when victor literally has the metaphor for an abortion within the book. put some respect on his name

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.

victor “i'm not mad i'm not a madman please believe me" frankenstein and his constant assertions that he’s not insane throughout the whole novel only to become the foundation for the mad scientist trope. puts head in hands

I really enjoy neurodivergent readings of classic literature because the whole "i have an obsession with being pure/great/always seen as morally good" "sometimes I get obsessed with an idea and believe I'm on the right path and don't act rationally" "i feel uneasy and incapable of enjoying things since [traumatic event(s)]" "I feel alienated from society and don't understand it at all" bunch of thoughts that are very present in most classics are almost always big symptoms of some kind of mental illness (which, in fact, does add a lot to the story) and I love to see people talk about them from that perspective instead of just "lol this guy is whiny and dumb"

i was trying to find a specific post that i half-remembered at like 4am last night but out of context this is really funny

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

i don’t think victors misinterpretation of the creatures threat “i will be with you on your wedding night” as a warning of his own impending death was to show victor’s hubris or self-centeredness, but instead shelley employing a deliberate display of dramatic irony, which is common within gothic literature. the gothic genre thrives on tension, dread, and suspense, and gothic narratives often involve secrets and psychological turmoil, all of which dramatic irony enhances. it also further cements frankenstein as a tragedy and, because of the disconnect between what characters perceive and what the reader anticipates, it reinforces the theme of fate throughout the novel (which is particularly pervasive in the 1831 version). but hey whatever this might be the rampant victor defender in me speaking