It's Immediately Clear That Both The Creature And Victor Find Some Of Their Greatest Comforts In Nature

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

What do you think of Robert Walton? I love that silly sailor very dearly and in one of your post you said that he was a little like Percy Shelley and I'm really curious to know why that is :]

i can't believe i've never shared my waltonthoughts before!!! in short

to be honest for a pretty large majority of my frankenstein fandom time i've been fairly apathetic about walton? (sorry robin 😞) i felt really really bad because i couldn't quite pinpoint why; he's an intriguing character with some really interesting stuff going on, his narration is charming and incredibly complex but i just i don't know. he didn't arouse my curiosity and desire to analyze like the other characters did (i admit my frankenstein rereads i kinda. skip the letters at the beginning. i know i am so sorry). it might be that he's quite far removed from the themes in frankenstein that really intrigue me like mental illness, neurodivergency, and generational trauma so nothing abt him stuck out to me

but!!! i am no longer apathetic about him! i thought it would feel like a chore to go through his letters with a fine toothed comb but walton represents what i think is a really underrepresented dichotomy: he's very industrious and self-efficacious, kinda like one of those self made millionaire crypto bros, with a privileged station and promising, comfortable future, but he has this wanderlust for life and beauty and romance that he cant really reconcile with his and it causes him a lot of distress and loneliness. when he meets victor he thinks he finds someone that can satisfy this longing for the romantic and sublime, someone attractive, intelligent, engaging, and ostensibly an avatar of the tragic romantic figure - walton thinks that this is the only proxy by which he can be understood and further understand himself, the only adequate vessel for this longing, which is probably why he attaches onto victor so obsessively. victor is tragic, beautiful, pitiful, complex, fallen from grace, and because of his idealism and thirst for a romantic story walton thinks he can save them both. especially because they knew each other for a relatively short period of time, i don't know to what extent walton loves victor or just loves the narrative of loving victor. in the idiot by dostoevsky prince myshkin says of natasya filippovna "i love her not with love, but with pity" and i think that might be what's going on with walton and victor. i need to spend more time thinking about that though

on the subject of him being like percy the major similarity i noticed is that walton, being an orphan, was raised by his older sister, and ive seen some people attribute his emotional and "effeminate" nature to his being raised under her "gentle and feminine fosterage"; similarly, percy shelley was very close to his mother and sisters in his youth, and ive seen a couple scholars attribute his sentimentality of character and feminist-adjacent ideas (like free love) to his being close to female figures in his childhood and young adulthood. probably a stretch but i just think it's kinda interesting. the two also share some other similarities like being poets in profession (or at least trying to be 😭) and veneration for nature

i think i had more to say but my brain power is depleted 😭 im so so so sorry it took me so long to get around to this ask!!! i had to do a little rereading and critical thinking which is yucky

i did some precursory reading on this and i think you may find priscilla wakefield's introduction to botany interesting; it was written in 1796, around the time victor would have died in the novel. i also skimmed anna sagal's botanical entanglements, but the scope of it was in all honestly beyond me.

in regard to woman's education with botany, i came back with a lot of conflicting information. there's a few things in wakefield's introduction that align with what you suggested, and, in general, the study of science, and by extension, botany, was inherently linked with the study of religion and of "the natural order of things." in regards to the 1800s like you were saying, i did find a source saying that it started to be considered a modern science around 1830s, thus a serious occupation for men, and as a result women's status in the field began to decline; mary shelley would have had written frankenstein before this turning point.

however, i couldn't find anything about women being taught botany specifically during the late 1700s; i think it's unlikely women would have had any sort of formal education in botany (and etc), because while the frankensteins were rather radical in their approach to education, intense study was still seen as unfeminine and/or it was thought that it was beyond the intellectual capacities of women to study and learn at a profound level. but! some sources said that botany was an alternative way of studying natural history that would allow a person to subtly defy the (social) limits of woman’s intellectual practice and education, which i believe is very in character for elizabeth. many botanists were also illustrators and painters, like elizabeth!

Something very cool I realized about Elizabeth Lavenza-Frankenstein

So, this is backed up with some pretty light research so please correct me if I’m wrong, but just know this is based on something an actual historian told me.

So, apparently back in the 1800s, young women would be taught botany in order to educate them about the natural order of things. It was meant to teach them how God created the earth to be. It was a branch of science women (specifically upper class women, like Elizabeth) thrived in.

In Frankenstein, Elizabeth is meant to be the model of a young upper-class women. She engages in the natural sciences because she knows the natural order of things, and how Hod intended the world to work. This is in contrast to Victor, who wants to defy God and take his powers for himself. Victor wants to disturb the natural order of the world, and Elizabeth wants to preserve it.

”this video is made possible by ingolstadt morgue. not sponsored” victor says while breaking and entering

I just got back from a study trip so have some Elizabeth doodles I did during free time

Victor Frankenstein upon reaching university

victor, on being seen as mad:

Hey. Don't cry. Weird teenage girl somewhere out there reading Frankenstein for the first time. Ok?

you're in his dms i am awakening a part of his conscience that he did not know existed so that he can overcome his religious trauma have sex with women and enjoy his life we are not the same