(for your desire to frankenyap-) what is your favorite Henry Clerval Momentâ„¢ 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 đŸ˜ 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