I Might Be Back On My Bullshit

victor's belief that he's responsible for the deaths of his family (by extension of creating the creature) was borne out of excessive guilt, i might go as far as to say bordering on delusions of persecution. id argue walton was more directly responsible for deaths than victor ever was (several members of his crew died on his ship as a result of his inexperience and persistence), but first and foremost the creature was responsible, not victor, and to suggest otherwise i think is blatantly ignoring the creature's autonomy. he had a cultivated understanding of morality and the world's evils and chose, while knowing and feeling that it was a moral wrong, to murder. i think, eventually, it is this willingness to deliberately go against his own morals to commit evil acts that victor considers monstrous, not just the creature's monstrous appearance in of itself, which is one of the defining factors of his choice not to create the female creature.

if anything, id argue this passage is actually proof of victor acknowledging his "failure as a parent" or rather his duty as a parent, its just not done so directly. this is a story being told in retrospect, and that fact colors victor's narration because he already knows the events that are being described. in this sense, the quote seems more of an acknowledgement of this than anything else, particularly with the language of "creature" and "being to which they had given life" used to describe a child, which, like youre saying, are both blatant parallels to how victor describes the creature. if you look at this and then consider it within the context of victor and creature's confrontation on the alps, where victor does actually explicitly admit to his duties as a creator, i think it changes things:

For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand.

and then, later:

I was moved [...] I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?

in both quotes victor mentions he feels he owes the creature happiness, i.e. the same "train of enjoyment" he experienced in his own childhood, and it is the feelings the creature expressed (stemming from his mistreatment by victor, but also more importantly by society as a whole; i think people tend to overinflate the importance of the creature's "abandonment" by victor in the grand scheme of things) that push victor to this idea. that is, victor pretty directly admits to the effect of his absence on creature.

Victor Frankenstein admits multiple times that him creating the creature led to multiple deaths so he’s responsible in that sense but he assumes it’s because he created a monster but in my opinion, he knows him failing as a parent/abandoning the creature is why it turned out the way that it did, he just won’t admit it, and this passage from chapter one is my prime evidence.

I was their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.

as i was reading the 1818 annotated text of mary shelley’s frankenstein, i noticed that one of my favorite lines, “Clerval was a being formed in the very poetry of nature”, had an annotation by Shelley connecting it to The Story Of Rimini by Leigh Hunt.

i obviously checked it out, and found out that that line was describing PAOLO from dante’s inferno… as in paolo and francesca… THE star-crossed lovers… francesca was in an arranged marriage (familiar?) and sinned by falling in love with paolo… and theyre together in hell and regret nothing…

i’m actually weeping over this being a canon parallel. go stream francesca by hozier one billion times

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Joellen Bland | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Gary P. Cohen and Jeffrey Jackson | FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady & James V. Hart | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley.

frankenstein & fatherhood

important additions

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

and my personal favourite:

victor: my childhood was sunshine and roses 😁

victor’s childhood: neglect, parentification, arranged marriage as a child to his sister/cousin, has to raise his younger sibling(s) from the age of 6, heavy favoritism among siblings, father is dismissive of his interests, sick brother, sick sister, dead mother

He felt like he might create new life. "I-i think i'm gonna create new life.."

tfw u rly want this dying guy you found whimpering on a floe of ice but one can ever be to him as clerval was, because even when the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain (rolling eyes emoji)

dont know if i’ve said this all here yet but i see very often people pointing out victor’s supposedly idealistic childhood in comparison to the creature’s early suffering, and it always comes off as some sort of “gotcha!” moment when i think really there’s room there to be looking at the WHY that is. why, despite supposedly having this ideal childhood, with good, caring parental figures in his life, he fails to give this same upbringing to his own child? the issue is that of those who bring this up, their perspective tends to be already inherently limited: that is, victor is a bad parent simply because he is a privileged asshole. by beginning his narrative by describing his family and childhood as perfect and ideal, victor sets an expectation for parents that is obviously impossible, yet people continue to hold him accountable to it.

and, really, what childhood is really as perfectly happy as victor’s description? his almost-desperate insistence that his childhood WAS perfectly happy is just that — desperate — and it makes it suspicious. this insistence suggests the opposite, and i believe this assertion is taken at face-value far too often; particularly when his childhood, even in-text, was objectively imperfect and troubled, and victor himself directly addresses in his narration to walton that his past recollections of his family and early childhood are idealized, even going so far as to describe them as "religious" and "sacred" in feeling: i think [among other things] that this suggests, like many victims of childhood trauma and abuse, now that there is physical distance between the memories as well as time having passed since then, he has sentimentalized this era of his life

if you step back take a moment and look at the maternal figures in his life as well (caroline, elizabeth, and to a lesser extent justine) an obvious pattern emerges - each one of them was orphaned, and then “saved” by becoming a member of the frankenstein family, where they are afforded an environment where they are able to become these motherly, nurturing caretakers. this pattern is broken with victor: when he is orphaned, instead of joining the family, he EXITS it — that is, he is sent off to ingolstadt, and completely stripped of this support system, leading to his “failure” as a mother.

in a similar vein, the same people who harp on and on about how victor is negligent and an unaccountable father fail to hold the creature accountable for his actions as well, and somehow the fault for the entire plot of the book (that is, the murders of the frankensteins and co) rests solely on victors shoulders.

𝑺𝒆𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕....

Happy Halloween!!!

Here, as a "Treat" ☺️🫶

whaetever