You Think This Person Kins Victor

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.

imagine young victor demanding to be read ancient alchemy as a bedtime story. caroline begrudgingly sitting down to read her son his nightly chapter of de occulta philosophiae 

actually one of the things that continues to gut me the most about frankenstein is victor constantly asserting that he isnt crazy, that he is not a madman - he literally disrupts the flow of the narrative to do so, in his desperate attempts to be heard - and then he continues to recount a tale where he is constantly plagued by doubt and shame and guilt to the extent that does not tell anyone for fear of not being believed, or being thought of differently. and then these fears are only confirmed and re-affirmed when he attempts to reach out to anyone, and they do exactly that: during his feverish rambles henry believes it was due to his illness, he is imprisoned on the coast of ireland and kept there when his tale sounds like a confession, he is told by his father not to speak of it any longer, when he reaches out for help after elizabeth’s death the magistrate dismisses him. only one person ever sits down and suspends their disbelief and listens to him. robert walton, through the power of gay love—

i want to preface this with this is all courtesy of @dykensteinery's genius and not my own, i am merely putting his ideas into words for her!!!

so charlie brought to my attention that this quote from frankenstein, where victor refers to clerval as essentially his "other half":

“I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship."

was an allusion to plato's symposium. in the symposium, aristophanes presents a mythological account of human origins: that humans were once spherical beings—complete wholes—until they were split in two by zeus. ever since, each human being has wandered the world searching for their missing "other half." this myth explains not only the drive for romantic love but the deeper longing for union, for completion, for the return to an original state of wholeness. specifically, it was an allusion to this line (any quotes pulled from the symposium are from percy shelley's translation):

"From this period, mutual Love has naturally existed in human beings; that reconciler and bond of union of their original nature, which seeks to make two, one, and to heal the divided nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half of what may be properly termed a man…the imperfect portion of an entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the half belonging to him.”

considering this line is present in the 1831 edition but not the 1818 edition, after percy's death, during a time where his works were being edited and published by mary posthumously in 1826 and forward, it feels like a much more deliberate allusion. furthermore, i don’t think it’s reaching to say this revision, this framing of love as something that completes a person, was colored by that loss.

it's crucial, also, that aristophanes’ speech does not limit this yearning for your "other half" to heterosexual couples but rather includes and legitimizes same-sex love, particularly between men, as a natural expression of a desire for one’s “own kind":

“Those who are a section of what in the beginning was entirely male seek the society of males…When they arrive at manhood they still only associate with those of their own sex; and they never engage in marriage and the propagation of the species from sensual desire but only in obedience to the laws…Such as I have described is ever an affectionate lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which is in conformity with his own nature…Whenever, therefore, any such as I have described are impetuously struck, through the sentiment of their former union, with love and desire and the want of community, they are ever unwilling to be divided even for a moment.”

looking at this within the context of frankenstein, to me, this invites further reflection on a queer reading of the novel. the language of this passage—and others like it—have homoromantic subtext, especially when looking at it through this context. aristophanes describes those descended from the original male-male whole who pursue other men as “affectionate lover[s] and faithful friend[s]," which finds obvious parallels in the language mary uses to describe victor's idealization of clerval: victor constantly refers to him as noble, pure, good, better than himself. the language of friendship in the 18th and 19th century was often emotionally demonstrative in ways we don't see now, yes—but here, in light of the aristophanic frame, it rings a little different.

so basically? clervalstein real

(for your desire to frankenyap-) what is your favorite Henry Clerval Moment™ 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 😭 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

victor describing himself as “always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature” and then a few chapters later saying "[henry] was a being formed in the very poetry of nature". 🤨🤨 i know what you are

feeding your decaying georgian twunk how-to guide: soup, an oaten cake and a frozen dead hare

my hungry ass could never be a brain depositor

all victor hateposts boil down to are "i hate victor because [he displays XYZ mental/physical illness symptom]" or "i hate victor because [he does things or reacts in a certain way because of reasons outside of his control due to his illness]"