okay this is for you girlstein nation
before starting, i’d like to establish one element that will be relevant to the rest of the analysis: victor’s association of his material achievements with the measure of his worth. i believe this trait was instilled in him very early, both by his father, who disparages his interests as “sad trash,” and by a figure like krempe, who ritually humiliates victor by bringing up agrippa. victor feels the need to materialize his ideas, to have something to exhibit in order to legitimize his obsessions. there’s a direct link between his concrete success and his value, hence the need to create something beautiful, grand, and admirable; if it is, then that must necessarily mean victor is too.
victor’s vanity is key in the discussion, because the creature is, to him, the material proof of his worth. the creature is grandiose, intimately connected to traits idealized and judged favorably by society, such as beauty. thus, the creature becomes a performance, a demonstration of victor’s abilities, and by extension, a performance of masculinity. the creature displays hypermasculine traits: a large stature, immense physical strength, an intimidating presence, etc. he’s a parody, a caricature of the hegemonic masculinity that victor is expected to deliver (which is also tied to heterosexualy, something i think could be connected to the topic of the bride). at the same time, the creature is a failure of masculine performance.
on paper, yes. the creature ticks all the boxes of the ideal male form: he is tall, strong, yada yada. but concretely, this display is unnatural. the performance is fundamentally… wrong, uncanny, and unhuman. there is a clear dissonance between the intention and the performance BECAUSE victor does not embody the performative identity he tries to present to the world. the male body, by its unnatural quality, becomes a source of terror and discomfort for victor.
i’d like to note something, and that’s the dream victor has before running away from the creature. i’d like to point out that the dream is composed entirely of women, the most important feminine figures in his life. upon waking, victor flees the creature, and thus rejects masculine performance. what makes this so interesting is that, during those two years when victor was crafting the creature, he systematically neglected those feminine figures in his life. he barely wrote to elizabeth, he immersed himself in his work to cope with the grief caused by his mother’s death. figuratively and literally, victor relegates the feminine to the background, and indirectly, his own femininity. he needs this dream in order to wake up and renounce a manhood that never truly belonged to him
later, i might try to talk about the return of the creature as the return of a masculine obligation to a heterosexual relationship, and how this manhood haunts him until his death, but my brain is out of brain juice so 😛
tldr estrogen could've saved victor frankenstein
