She Herbert On My West Till My Dan Cain

”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!

oh yes their dynamic is so absolutely fucked and weird and sad. i think if victor hadnt died when he did, they would have just ended up making eachother worse and miserable

if victor ever requited walton’s love for him (be it platonic or romantic) i think walton would fall LESS in love. i think walton just loves romanticizing the unobtainable, he chases the unknown, and that’s why he hangs all his hopes on things he feasibly cannot reach - first becoming a famous poet, then sailing to the arctic to find the northern passage, and then victor, who is dying and too hung up on his past to love again

also, if victor HAD lived long enough to recover and be well again, i think walton would have lost interest in victor. victor and walton’s relationship was built and founded primarily on their dynamic as sick and caretaker, and without it i’m not sure walton would know what to do with himself, or he would become overbearing to compensate

at this point, victor would have already exhausted his whole story as well, so there’s no air of mystery around him anymore - nothing for walton to glorify or romanticize

Also it's very uncomfortable to see how much Walton romanticizes Victor's depression. "Noble and godlike in ruin" dude he's just educated in the same way as you and hyperfixating on revenge, please stop

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

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

i miss my first true love peter wiggin

In the clerb(al) we all fam(kenstein)

forever funny to me that when lamenting on henry’s death victor reminisces on how long his eyelashes were. and the word choice of ORBS. bro had it bad

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Mark Baron | MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady | WISHBONE CLASSICS FRANKENSTEIN, Micheal Burgan | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | A CATHEDRAL OF ALMOST LOVERS, cornflakesortoast | MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady | FRANKENSTEIN, Joellen Bland | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley

waltonstein, throughout several adaptations

for my 100th post (!) i thought i would, at long last, make a catch-all analysis on victor and elizabeth’s relationship, their marriage, and why specifically it was incestuous. throughout i may mention my interpretations of caroline’s past and her pseudo-incestuous relationship with alphonse, which you can read here. it’s not necessary to understand this post, but you’ll miss some of the nuance of the relationships between the frankensteins without it

in the 1818 version of the novel, elizabeth is the paternal first cousin of victor. she is, like caroline, similarly upper-class but falls into misfortune when her mother dies and she is left under the care of her father. these parallels become important later. after elizabeth’s mother dies, her father writes to alphonse “….requesting [Alphonse] to take charge of the infant Elizabeth” and that it was his wish “…that [Alphonse] should consider her as [his] own daughter, and educate her thus” (1818). that is, it was explicitly intended for elizabeth to be reared as a daughter to the frankensteins (and thus victor’s sister). 

in the 1831 edition, caroline specifically has an interest in elizabeth because she sees herself and her own situation in her, a background that mirrors her own. i’ll directly quote a post of mine instead of reiterating the same point. essentially: from the beginning caroline deliberately sets up parallels between herself and elizabeth. she wants a daughter, and adopts elizabeth specifically because elizabeth reminds her of herself, but grander: like she was, elizabeth is also a beggar and an orphan and homeless, but her story is more tragic, she is more beautiful, her debt to her caretakers more extreme, and her romantic relationship will go on to be more explicitly incestuous. through elizabeth and victor, caroline will perpetuate her own abuse. the difference is, unlike her own, this is a situation caroline can control.

from the beginning, at six years old, victor and elizabeth are raised with the expectation that they are going to be wed when they are older. as an adult, elizabeth reflects “that our union had been the favourite plan of [their] parents ever since our infancy” and that “we were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place” (1831). this is because of caroline’s “desire to bind as closely as possible the ties of domestic love” (1818), and so she is raised as victor’s “more than sister” (1831). they are encouraged to play at the role of mother and father/husband and wife together via raising and educating their younger siblings, particularly ernest. ernest is described as being victor’s “principal pupil” and, during his illness in infancy, elizabeth and victor were “his constant nurses” despite caroline, alphonse and maids/servants/caretakers being available

simultaneously, caroline grooms elizabeth into being a mini-me, calling her her “favorite” and encouraging her to embody the same values as her. caroline does all she can to have elizabeth be what is, essentially, a second version of her, while all the while dictating a marriage to her son

this becomes even more significant, when, on her deathbed, caroline reinforces her wish for victor and elizabeth to marry: “My children... my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love you must supply my place” (1831). by attempting to replace herself with elizabeth via telling her to “supply her place” (of mother/wife) to the rest of the family, caroline is not only dictating a marriage between brother and sister but now mother and son, as elizabeth shifts from a sister-figure to victor into a maternal substitute, and simultaneously is his bride-to-be. as a result the roles of mother, sister and wife become conflated in victor’s mind—to some degree, there is no one without the other.

there’s deeper things at play here too, namely that it creates victor’s later emotional obligation in honoring his mother’s dying wish to go through with the marriage (furthered because it is the “consolation” of his father… alphonse also says something to this effect after victor gets out of prison), but i have enough to say on how victor is relied on as a pillar of emotional support by all of his family that it warrants its own post

this subconscious shift between the role of sister figure to mother figure is further emphasized when, during his dream at ingolstadt after the creation of the creature, elizabeth morphs into caroline in victors arms: “I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth…Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms” (1831). that is, she literally changes from sister into mother. this is also the only kiss in the entire book, and the only instance victor and elizabeth display any affection for each other that is explicitly non-platonic (and elizabeth’s affections towards victor generally feel more motherly then amorous, particularly in contrast to the romance of felix and safie), and during it, she turns into victor’s mother and decays in his arms.

but why make the creature in the first place? well, as the common misconception goes, it wasn’t about reanimation (which was only mentioned once in a throwaway line) it was about creating new life. what victor wound up doing what was not reversing death, but what was, essentially, an alternate method of childbirth. this is a significant detail when considered in the context of victor and elizabeth’s relationship: victor’s goal was to create life, and he, at great lengths, intentionally circumvented women (elizabeth) in this process. why? so that he could dodge an act of incest—marrying elizabeth and providing the frankenstein heirs and carrying on the family legacy, which is what his family expected him to do.

there’s evidence to suggest elizabeth views victor as a brother. elizabeth indirectly acknowledges this relationship during justine’s trial, when she stands up for her defense: "I am," said she, "the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by, and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before, his birth…” (1831). here, elizabeth calls herself the cousin of william (which is notably what she refers to victor as, both when they are literally cousins and when they have no blood relation—either way, a familial term) and then corrects herself, that she is actually william’s sister. her reasoning for this? she was raised and educated by the frankensteins alongside him ever since she was young. if you follow this logic, by extension she also considers herself ernest’s—and more relevantly—victor’s sister.

there is an egregious amount of subtext that suggests victor also views elizabeth as a sibling as well. before victor leaves for his vacation with henry, alphonse tells him that he has “always looked forward to [victor’s] marriage with [his] cousin as the tie of our domestic comfort” because they were “attached to each other from earliest infancy” and “entirely suited to one another in dispositions and tastes.” however, he acknowledges that because of this, victor may, perhaps, “regard [elizabeth] as his sister, without any wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another whom you may love; and, considering yourself bound in honour to your cousin, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel” to which victor replies: “My dear father, re-assure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union” (1831). that is, he answers, no, he has not met any other woman he would rather marry, yet skirts around the former half of alphonse’s question and doesn’t acknowledge whether or not he views her as a sister or not.

this occurs again after victor is released from prison in ireland when, elizabeth, in a letter, does eventually ask him if he wants to back down from the marriage (this same letter features elizabeth literally hitting the nail on the head when asking if victor was going through with the marriage because he felt honor-bound to their parents). however, she poses this by asking: “But as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other, without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case?...Do you not love another?” to which victor honestly answers no, he has not met any other woman. however, it’s not addressed whether he’s in love with elizabeth herself, nor does he address whether or not their affection towards each other is akin to that of siblings–again he entirely ignores it.

when victor and alphonse return to geneva after his release from prison, alphonse proposes victor’s immediate marriage to elizabeth, to which victor remains silent. alphonse then confronts victor once more: “Have you, then, some other attachment?” victor responds: “None on earth. I love Elizabeth, and look forward to our union with delight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin" (1831). yet the “hopes and prospects” that victor saw bound in their marriage earlier was, in fact, his own death–which was “no evil to [him]...and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful countenance, agreed with my father, that if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the seal to my fate” (1831). victor sees going through with a marriage to elizabeth as suicide, and embraces this.

they are both mutually hesitant and describe feelings of dread and melancholy on their wedding day itself. at the very least this indicates a lack of romantic interest in each other. after the ceremony, when they row out on the boat together, victor has a thought that is perhaps the most blatant example of his romantic disinterest in elizabeth: “Then gazing on the beloved face of Elizabeth, on her graceful form and languid eyes, instead of feeling the exultation of a—lover—a husband—a sudden gush of tears blinded my sight, & as I turned away to hide the involuntary emotion fast drops fell in the wave below. Reason again awoke, and shaking off all unmanly—or more properly all natural thoughts of mischance, I smiled” (Frankenstein 1823). victor also makes it clear to the narrator (walton) that they did not consummate their marriage before elizabeth’s death, which suggests there was hesitance or disgust around the concept. 

this is a neat little aside and more circumstantial evidence then anything else, but it is pretty well known that mary shelley's works tend to be somewhat autobiographical, and that her characters are influenced by people in her own life. this is most obvious in the last man, but its also present to a lesser extent in frankenstein, wherein victor's character is inspired by (among others) percy shelley. percy wrote under the pseudonym victor, which is believed to be where victor's name may have come from—and elizabeth was the name of percy shelley's sister.

writing these are addictive