Classic Literature’s Gone WOKE…

important additions

I’ve been looking through some of Frankenstein Wikipedia edits, and here are some of highlights:

and my personal favourite:

𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂steinery

slander on my good name

Another twitter meme

Og

literally so fucking embarrassing to have a favorite character bc it will have you sitting there thinking things such as "omg he experiences the 5 senses" and "omg he wears clothes and feels the texture of them on his skin" and "omg he eats food and tastes it" and "omg he sleeps with his eyes closed in a bed with sheets" Like be honest should i just kill myself at this point

Fascinating trend I’ve noticed from lurking in Frankenstein-related tags:

If there’s a male construct, people frame him as the creator’s child. He has full agency and personhood and deserves to be raised in a family. The most obvious example of this is Frankenstein’s Creature, but you’ll see echoes of it with creators of robots, Pinocchio, etc.

If there’s a female construct, people frame it as expected that she’s created to be a romantic/sexual object. I saw a few posts that Pygmalion is morally superior to Victor Frankenstein because he fell in love with his creation, for instance. I don’t need to go into the dozens of “make a female robot and fall for her” tropes.

The most uncomfortable intersection of this dichotomy are the countless posts insisting that it was Victor’s duty as a father to create a female to gift to his son—and that the “wait but she’ll be an actual person of her own” reservations Victor had in the book were immoral. He owes his son (male construct = family, agency, personhood) the gift of a person (female construct = object, no agency, not family). She wouldn’t be a daughter, just “the Bride.” Nothing about Víctor owing her happiness, but the exact opposite: that she must be custom-designed to be miserable and rejected so she’d be trapped with the male-creature.

For a piece of literature where personhood is such a central theme, it’s a disturbing and disappointing trend.

*pats victor like you would the roof of a car* cultural osmosis really did a number on you didnt it

what if you were willing to do anything to achieve your ambition of making a geographical and scientific discovery to benefit all of mankind via being the first to find the northern passage and get to the north pole but i said "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (and we were both boys) 

top 3 worst frankenstein takes:

"frankenstein is the REAL monster". boring, hackneyed, overdone

"mary shelley wrote this just to get away from lord byron" embarassingly wrong, read anything at all she wrote about him to be immediately disproven

transphobia, somehow

𝑺𝒆𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕....

Happy Halloween!!!

Here, as a "Treat" ☺️🫶

yes i just made a post about nonbinary victor and yes i will make analysis on a transfem reading of victor in the next breath

long, rambling analysis under the cut

• victor does not merely seek to create life but to do so in a way that bypasses the female body entirely. a transmasculine reading might focus on his desire to "usurp" childbirth, but in a transfeminine reading, his method reflects an unwillingness to claim masculinity through the traditional path of fatherhood. instead, he externalizes the process, removing himself from it as much as possible

• his tendency toward secrecy and repression also reinforces his role as a feminine character. unlike a traditional male protagonist who would confront his guilt head-on, victor internalizes his fears, choosing to suffer silently rather than assert control over his narrative; his silence and self-inflicted isolation recall the way women in gothic fiction are often dismissed, disbelieved, or forced into silence by societal constraints

• as victor grows more and more ill during the creation process (one big metaphor for childbirth), he, despite being aware of his sickness, describes being unable to stop himself due to "supernatural" forces outside of himself: "the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end," much like how pregnancy is an uncontrollable, continuous process. moreover, his "languor and extreme weakness" parallels the physical toll of pregnancy and labor, what he literally describes as quote "time spent in painful labour"

• victor describes himself as "timid as a love-sick girl" (!) during his illness in the 1823 text

• he experiences postpartum depression and psychosis

• in general, he is expected to take on the more traditionally masculine role of being this pillar of emotional support for the family. victor is reprimanded and reminded time and time again by alphonse to conform and uphold these traditional masculine values of "sucking up" his grief, but continues to experience a stereotypically "feminine" range of emotion despite, what alphonse incorrectly recognizes as false pride. additionally, upon his return to geneva he is in such a state of emotional turmoil he is the one who has to be comforted by elizabeth, not the other way around

• in the same vein, as the heir to the frankenstein family his father assumes he will carry on the family legacy and pursue a respectable, intellectual career as a syndic, yet victor's interest veer into obsession, secrecy, and isolation--behaviors that mirror the gothic trope of the confined, melancholic woman rather than the bold and authoritative man of science. he id the only frankenstein to go into further education upon the whim of his parents, and he returns from ingolstadt in a worse state than before

• alongside elizabeth, he takes on the traditionally feminine role of caretaker of young william and ernest

• his destruction of the bride can be read as a metaphor for abortion, particularly alongside his profound guilt, grief and psychological decline afterwards. his reasoning for tearing apart the female creature mirrors anxieties surrounding reproduction and parenthood: he fears she will bear offspring, that she will be uncontrollable, that she will exert influence over the creature

• victor experiences gendered oppression for his  "feminine" emotional demonstrativeness of anxiety, weakness, fear, etc. (within the historical context)--one that, while not explicit, places him in the position of a disbelieved, silenced, and emotionally unstable figure. from the moment after the creatures animation, victor anticipates that no one will believe his story, a fear that parallels the societal treatment of women who speak out about trauma, abuse, or other experiences that challenge dominant narratives. he repeatedly laments that if he were to reveal the truth, he would be labeled mad, irrational, or delusional--labels historically used to dismiss women’s testimony

• even when victor does attempt to speak out, his fears about being seen as mad are realized. when he tells the magistrate that the creature is responsible for the murder of elizabeth, he is met with skepticism and his words are treated as the ravings of a madman. this moment in particular envokes the historical treatment of women who were seen as having "excessive emotions". his story is too outrageous, his grief too unhinged, his emotions too raw--he does not embody the calm, rational, masculine authority that commands belief

• this all adds another layer to his dynamic with walton and clerval, both of whom serve as more socially acceptable and physically capable (i say physically capable because victor had to rely on them for care) male counterparts. walton, in particular, acts as a recorder of victors tale, much like how male voices have historically been needed to validate women’s experiences. victor must rely on walton, a man, to preserve his narrative, just as women have often needed male advocates to be taken seriously

• clerval actively assumes responsiblity for victor’s well-being in times of illness as he not only nurses him back to health but also controls how his condition is reported to others, particularly elizabeth and alphonse. he mediates victor’s communication with his family, much like how a husband would manage a wife’s affairs, especially regarding health and medical decisions. this positions victor in a traditionally passive, dependent role assigned to women and further shows his lack of autonomy--he is not just physically weakened but also deprived of agency over his own care, reliant on clerval’s judgment and control

• furthermore, when he requests to travel alone to create the bride, they send clerval with him without consulting him, reinforcing the idea that victor cannot (or should not) function independently. simultaneously this also creates a dynamic resembling husband and wife between clerval and victor, (as the lovely @victorfreakenste1n, who first pointed this out to me, phrased it) “women can’t do anything on their own, they need their husband to make proper decisions”

• victor is rarely in control of his own life, despite his obsession with controlling life itself. his parents orchestrate his future by choosing his wife and his career path. even when he attempts to assert independence--pursuing science against their expectations--his actions are driven by compulsion (as his studies spiral into an uncontrollable obsession) rather than genuine autonomy. his “escape” to ingolstadt isn’t a rebellion but a deferral of obligation, and his eventual return home is forced by tragedy

• victor’s treatment also mirrors elizabeth’s: just as she is expected to wait patiently for victor, he is expected to defer to his family’s guidance. both are essentially passive participants in their own fates, shaped by expectations they cannot fully escape

takes a bow. the end