(in Response To @mrbrainrot’s Post Here)

A compilation of my approximately recent Vivi Frankenstein drawings

we as people should be more like robert walton and henry clerval (hopelessly in love with victor frankenstein)

herbert west comes with one of those drink labels that say “shake well”

she franken on my stein till i beautiful! great god! his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

every night after bringing people back to life in his basement laboratory herbert curls up in a wicker basket with a blanket at dans feet next to a ball of yarn 

victor and elizabeth were not the first grooming case nor the first pseudo-incest relationship in frankenstein: that would be alphonse and caroline.

alphonse was a friend of caroline’s father, beaufort. this is how they met, and so there was a significant difference in their ages. after beaufort dies, alphonse and caroline marry. take a look at how beaufort’s passing is described:

Her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her; and she knelt by Beaufort’s coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.

while "orphan" does not strictly mean the person is a minor, orphan still is most commonly used to describe a minor whose parents are both dead. if we interpret orphan in that sense, then caroline would have been a child when alphonse first took her in. the fact that he waits two years after this event to marry her also hints towards this, almost as if he was waiting for her to become legal and the age of consent. this is further supported by the diminutive language of “poor girl” used to describe her, who is in juxtaposition to the paternal “protecting spirit” of alphonse whom she commits herself into the care of.

even if caroline was not a minor, there was a large enough gap in their ages - and the fact that alphonse “saved” caroline from poverty, creating an economical reliance on him - that there was an unhealthy power balance in their relationship. because of this dynamic, it really does read like grooming: alphonse houses caroline till she is (supposedly) old enough to marry, and by that time she would have been pushed into consenting to the marriage because she relied on him for money and housing, and could have some sort of emotional obligation to him as well for supporting her in a time of need and grief, and he is a significant link to her deceased father. this difference in their ages is highlighted again when victor notes that alphonse was in the decline of his life by the time he and caroline were having children together, and by the time victor is 19 alphonse is old enough that he is physically incapable of traveling to ingolstadt.

in this way their relationship is pseudo-incestous, because alphonse (her father’s age) swoops in to support caroline (a child) after her father dies. this makes himself the father figure replacement, and caroline his daughter. once she is of age she transitions from the role of daughter to wife, and during her marriage caroline will go on to repeat this cycle of abuse, and recreate this same dynamic - except this time, it is in a situation that she can control: through victor and elizabeth.

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 incestous. caroline calls elizabeth her favorite and grooms her into becoming a second version of herself, so that she can recreate the traumatic event of her marriage with her two children.

so, as caroline dictates the marriage between victor and elizabeth, victor becomes to elizabeth what alphonse was to caroline: a man, who is also a familial figure, that she must marry in order to have a stable social and economic life. the frankensteins have provided elizabeth with everything she has, and the threat is there that they can also take it away if she does not comply (through marrying victor), which is the same kind of looming, unspoken threat that hung over caroline and alphonse’s marriage.

what do yall know about achilles de flandres

Frankenstein…

As I finished reading yesterday's chapter, the ending got me thinking about the usage of water in Frankenstein. I don't quite have the bandwidth at the moment to properly explore it all, but I think there's some really interesting usage of it. Here's a few pieces:

There's repeated imagery of Victor drifting aimlessly on a lake, both in times of happiness and when he is avoiding his promise to the Creature.

He goes to an island, separated from the mainland to build the female Creature. And then when he decides not to complete his work, he disposes of her body in the ocean. Immediately afterward, his habitual drifting is turned against him, with the sea sweeping him away and nearly killing him, then delivering him directly to Henry's corpse

Once again he finds brief peace while laying on the deck of the ship leaving Ireland, looking at the sky above... but again it's interrupted, this time by a nightmare

Elizabeth and Victor travel from their wedding by water, and the narration of the passage really drives home the beauty around them, but that their travel towards shore is taking them away from a place of refuge and into danger. There's a feeling of 'if they just stayed on the water...'

So that's Victor. And there could be something said about the difference between still water/safety, and moving water/danger, perhaps. Which would be an interesting detail as well to how all the beautiful things Elizabeth points out are in motion. But there there's also:

The Creature first seeing himself in a puddle

Him saving that girl from drowning in a river as his final positive (for them, very much not for him) encounter with people before every following one turning out violent

He first meets Victor by the 'frozen sea', is linked seemingly with glaciers and frozen water

He follows Victor across the ocean and to his isolated island, and seems to have acquired his own boat/be an expert at steering it and traveling rapidly across the water

And that's not even getting into the framing device set in the Arctic, with Walton's intentions to explore, the danger of the ice. The Creature (better at resisting cold than humans) being chased by Victor. Just a whole bunch of stuff. It feels intentional, it feels like there's something to talk about here, but I can't quite parse it all out.

we as the clervalstein nation do not talk enough about this chunk of text