Henry Clerval - Blog Posts

Guillermo del Toro directing Frankenstein is a gift to humanity on its own, but the possibility of Andrew Garfield finally bringing the queer yearning and fruitiness that has been missing from every adaptation of Frankenstein is the cherry on top of the cake

EDIT:

some headshots I did for a Frankenstein assignment

Henry Clerval my beloved ♥

Victor Frankenstein and Henry Clerval with their hair down, to show off those beautiful long 18th century locks! ♥

(Also this is pretty much how I imagined their height difference too)

Henry Clerval is part Hobbit. You can't change my mind.

My design for Henry Clerval from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus :)

An absolute ray of sunshine and Victor Frankenstein's excellent friend ♥

Frankenstein Coraline AU

I saw some fanart of Adam (the creature) with button eyes and I just HAD to do it!

@aspidateasteism cuz I think they’ll like it (if I’m wrong, sorry Vic)

Some frames from an animatic I’m making

Frankenstein Heathers AU except everyone is out of character lol

Frankenstein Swap AU

victor frankenstein is very gay and in love with his best friend henry clerval, in this essay i will-

I need me a clerval

@jasperinthemachine

my thoughts exactly

gay people can never be normal they always gotta say some shit like "he was a being formed in the very poetry of nature. his wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. his soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination".

ORION HELP MEEE IM BACK ON MY CLERVALSTEIN BS ITS BEEN A YEAR AND A HALF!!!! THEY HAUNT ME!!!!!! im literally rereading and annotating my copy at 12:50 am to organ music ugh im going insane

*i roll you out in fromt of my followers like one of those old tvs on carts they had in elementary school*

see, kids? annotation is a good skill to learn!

but in all seriousness, my reccomendation is to lean into it until it fades again. use passion while you have it.

i want to preface this with this is all courtesy of @dykensteinery's genius and not my own, i am merely putting his ideas into words for her!!!

so charlie brought to my attention that this quote from frankenstein, where victor refers to clerval as essentially his "other half":

“I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship."

was an allusion to plato's symposium. in the symposium, aristophanes presents a mythological account of human origins: that humans were once spherical beings—complete wholes—until they were split in two by zeus. ever since, each human being has wandered the world searching for their missing "other half." this myth explains not only the drive for romantic love but the deeper longing for union, for completion, for the return to an original state of wholeness. specifically, it was an allusion to this line (any quotes pulled from the symposium are from percy shelley's translation):

"From this period, mutual Love has naturally existed in human beings; that reconciler and bond of union of their original nature, which seeks to make two, one, and to heal the divided nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half of what may be properly termed a man…the imperfect portion of an entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the half belonging to him.”

considering this line is present in the 1831 edition but not the 1818 edition, after percy's death, during a time where his works were being edited and published by mary posthumously in 1826 and forward, it feels like a much more deliberate allusion. furthermore, i don’t think it’s reaching to say this revision, this framing of love as something that completes a person, was colored by that loss.

it's crucial, also, that aristophanes’ speech does not limit this yearning for your "other half" to heterosexual couples but rather includes and legitimizes same-sex love, particularly between men, as a natural expression of a desire for one’s “own kind":

“Those who are a section of what in the beginning was entirely male seek the society of males…When they arrive at manhood they still only associate with those of their own sex; and they never engage in marriage and the propagation of the species from sensual desire but only in obedience to the laws…Such as I have described is ever an affectionate lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which is in conformity with his own nature…Whenever, therefore, any such as I have described are impetuously struck, through the sentiment of their former union, with love and desire and the want of community, they are ever unwilling to be divided even for a moment.”

looking at this within the context of frankenstein, to me, this invites further reflection on a queer reading of the novel. the language of this passage—and others like it—have homoromantic subtext, especially when looking at it through this context. aristophanes describes those descended from the original male-male whole who pursue other men as “affectionate lover[s] and faithful friend[s]," which finds obvious parallels in the language mary uses to describe victor's idealization of clerval: victor constantly refers to him as noble, pure, good, better than himself. the language of friendship in the 18th and 19th century was often emotionally demonstrative in ways we don't see now, yes—but here, in light of the aristophanic frame, it rings a little different.

so basically? clervalstein real

as i was reading the 1818 annotated text of mary shelley’s frankenstein, i noticed that one of my favorite lines, “Clerval was a being formed in the very poetry of nature”, had an annotation by Shelley connecting it to The Story Of Rimini by Leigh Hunt.

i obviously checked it out, and found out that that line was describing PAOLO from dante’s inferno… as in paolo and francesca… THE star-crossed lovers… francesca was in an arranged marriage (familiar?) and sinned by falling in love with paolo… and theyre together in hell and regret nothing…

i’m actually weeping over this being a canon parallel. go stream francesca by hozier one billion times

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

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, Nicole Mello | FRANKENSTEIN, Alexander Utz | MONSTER, Neal Bell | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | HENRY CLERVAL SCOLDING VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN: AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POEM ABOUT GRADUATE STUDENTS AND THEIR DAEMONS, Adam D. Henze | FRANKENSTEIN, Alexander Utz | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Mark Baron | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley.

clervalstein, over several adaptations

gay people can never be normal they always gotta say some shit like "he was a being formed in the very poetry of nature. his wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. his soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination".

hi i’m coming out as a huge frankenstein nerd. i love them more than my own family

this is what i was doing in 2022. frankenstein coffee shop AU but the creature doesnt exist its just clervalstein both swooning over the marine biology student (whose minoring in poetry) together. peak nonsense

(for your desire to frankenyap-) what is your favorite Henry Clerval Moment™ in the novel?

henry clerval!!!!! my one true love

my favorite moment of his that i cannot believe people don't talk about is him diverting the subject when theyre talking to waldman abt victor's "progress in the sciences." he is so ridiculously thoughtful it's absolutely adorable. ive written out how i think that particular conversation went for a writing exercise and i fell so in love w henry. victor i get it so divinely wrought and beaming with beauty fr

this um. turned into a super long analysis somehow 😭 under the cut

i have a lot more to say about my least favorite henry moment though; i know we all clown on the 1831 turning henry into a colonizer thing, and i absolutely love to make fun of it as well because is was A Choice, but henry's character assassination in the 1831 edition fills me with genuine and outstanding rage. to what extent he just serves as a love letter to percy shelley (i think the idea has merit that clerval was based on percy but i also think it kinda follows the general trend of people attributing mary's genius and independent work to percy at every conceivable opportunity) (if anything i'd argue walton is more like percy) can be debated, but it is so infuriating to me how henry goes from a character that seems to have been written with genuine affection and enthusiasm, hence why he's so charming, to being a glorified plot device in the 1831 edition. having henry go from a sensual capital r Romantic whose only goals are to worship nature and discover all the beautiful corners of the earth, learning eastern languages and going to england just for the sake of living out a worldly life, to some businessman whose actions are spurred on by some manly commitment to "enterprise" is so annoying to me. i really really do hate what she did to him in the 1831 edition but i get why. this is a trend with the 1831 edition: making the male characters' more sensitive and emotionally demonstrative behaviors less obvious and making the female characters' more headstrong personalities milder show how mary had to nuke the subtleties of the novel to make it more palatable and interpretable for victorian society. ofc she was older when she wrote the 1831 edition so much of it could've been her own shifting perspective but i maintain that 1831 is decidedly much more conservative and seems to tread on eggshells on the subjects mary used to be so bold discussing in frankenstein. i don't think that one edition is better than the other, there are things i like and disliked about both, but i do think you need to know the differences between the two and their exigence to get a holistic understanding of the novel.

jesus christ i lost the plot. anyway henry come home the husband and kids miss you <3

I hate it when Frankenstein adaptations make Henry a hater… like bro he is NOT. A hater. “Dearest Frankenstein,”???? Nursing Victor back to health??? Uh yeah that’s totally hater behavior

fellas is it gay to nurse your friend back to health from his nervous fever which incapacitates him for several months despite making a promise to yourself to study languages and then later embark on a joyful and exciting journey through britain with said friend before parting ways and eventually getting killed by said friend's rogue creation because the monster recognised you as one of the things your friend holds most dear, leaving him in a state of near-death at the grief of your loss

Update: They have coats :]

link to my other post with these dolls

I was rereading Volume III of Frankenstein and I have some things to say about my favorite boy, Henry Clerval.

At the start of the book, the first thing we know about Clerval is that he is a poet whose dream is being frustrated because his father wants him to be an extent of his businesses and fails to understand why Henry would want an education when those things are “superfluous in the commerce of ordinary life”.

Being a merchant is not what disturbs Henry, but the idea of not having another choice; forcing him to be an ignorant who only lives in conformism with no purpose of his own is tortuous enough to make him loathe that path of existence, leading to a desperation and need to escape those restraints and feel that he has a potential that goes beyond the restrictions that have so plagued his daily life.

That's why I think the way in which Henry describes the places that he and Victor visited across Europe is more than just a pretty description of the landscape. The burst of inspiration that he experiments becomes much more personal considering how Victor says that he is feeling "a happiness rarely tasted by man" and Clerval himself lasts a whole page talking in heavy detail about the wonders he can appreciate.

The passion that Henry feels in the journey is so extreme and magical that he is convinced that he found a paradise where all the worlds he created in his head are finally taking form, allowing him to have a perspective that's so much more than Geneva's frozen mountains, even wanting to live forever in England because there he found the fulfillment that he so long sought for.

The delight of Clerval was proportionally greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. “I could pass my life here,” said he to me; “and among these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine.”

Henry is deeply unsatisfied with the life that has been dictated to him, being in constant search of some place where the sensibility of his heart can flourish and can prove that the person he wishes to be isn't conditioned by the impediments that were told to him during his childhood.

Those aspirations and emotions are the ones that create both his contrast and similarity with Victor; the two of them are equally ambitious and therefore are the ones that know best how to understand each other when everything is going downwards. Henry takes care of Victor when the repent of his actions is too much to allow him to get out of bed and provides him with at least a meager pinch of hope that things will get better, and Victor, even though it's through a eulogy, makes sure to preserve Clerval's memory telling to anyone who would listen about the incomparable potential and kindness that still comforts his poor soul beyond the grave.

Henry's death is cruel in all the ways it can be. It not only takes away the last solace that Victor had, leading him to an extreme of despair that leaves him with no reason for existing. But also makes sound all of Henry's plans for the future like the prayers of a moribund; he stops being a person to become only a tragedy sentenced to be forgotten in the distant shores of Ireland, where he is only a stranger that no one can give a cry to.

Maybe I'm looking too much into it, but this book scares you not for the fact that there's a living corpse, but for the fact that there is no place for hope, and you slowly realize how doomed the situation is while you are forced to see how the misfortune develops, so I wouldn't be surprised if all the possibilities of Henry living a fulfilling life were only shown to be taken away by a whim of fate.

finger prints

you think this person kins victor

henry !

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

In electromagnetism, inductance is the tendency of an electrical conductor to oppose a change in the electric current flowing through it. It has units of Henry, and for small inductance it can be denoted in units of microhenries (μH). So, the entire time we were covering this in my physics class, i was suffering from my severe frankenstein brainrot, and this is the result lol