Its So Interesting To See The Variety Of Ways In Which People Can Interpret The Same Characters In The

its so interesting to see the variety of ways in which people can interpret the same characters in the same story based on their own variety of life experiences and values and influences!! ive seen quite a few posts going around lately about transfem frankenstein which gave me a moment of pause to realize "huh I literally never thought about that before" and how fascinating it is to see the same things interpreted in opposite ways

ive always been in the "victor is a trans man whose struggles come in part from being incompatible with the female roles that are constantly imposed on him" school and viewed the story and character under that lens and i dont think I've ever actually listed what stands out to me to influence that reading. meandering list under cut:

from childhood, he accepts unquestioningly his mother's declaration that Elizabeth is a present for him, an object that can be transferred to his possession. iirc she's the only character besides the creature that Victor affords any significant physical description at all. he compares her in his descriptions to animals (a summer insect, a bird), and states that he "loved to tend on her, as [he] should on a favourite animal." in the 1831 edition, he refers to her as something otherwordly, a "distinct species," "saintly," "a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features." (ironically, Victor himself later is on the receiving end of this objectification by Walton, described as being like a "celestial spirit, that has a halo around him," "divine wanderer," "godlike," etc.) despite how close Victor and Elizabeth seem based on Victor's tenderness toward and admiration of her, he definitely "others" her as a female peer and keeps her clearly separated in ways that he doesn't quite do with his male peers. to me this comes across as his having negative feelings of connections to women and relies on his parents' assurance that women are something altogether different; and how could he have a feminine role if he accepted that Elizabeth was the one put in his possession to defer to him?

he was put in the role of nurturer/caretaker as a child, a "constant nurse" alongside Elizabeth to Ernest

his nightmare on the night of the creation involved only women: the affection he demonstrated to Elizabeth made her rot into the worm-eaten corpse of his mother, both a punishment of displaying passion towards a woman as well as tying his relationship to Elizabeth back to the presence and wishes of his mother

the most obvious one is the metaphor of childbirth/giving life, which Victor devotes himself to circumventing. it's not the fact that Victor is desperate to find a way to create life that's significant to the transmasc interpretation, but the fact that he dedicates himself to finding a way to create life that's completely separate from one's own body. he still suffers in his extreme labors over the project, but he does succeed in physically externalizing the process. (there's also his preoccupation with masculine ideals in building his creation)

though he divorced himself from the traditional way of giving life, he still in a way tried to compromise between his own strong feelings and the expectations of gender pushed on him. relenting to a "female" role of giving life, no matter how intelligently and miraculously he compromised to meet the expectation in his own way, locked him into an unfortunate reality in which his maleness would not be taken seriously by those around him:

though he had never been previously inclined to anxiety or paranoia and thus couldn't really have known how his friends or family would react if he told the truth of his creation, he was completely confident that if he were to tell anyone he would be dismissed as insane and delirious. he was already aware that his overwhelming emotion and nervous fevers would disqualify him from being taken seriously, even by his family (another obvious one, very strong parallels to the historical view of "female hysteria" that placed the blame of all a woman's troubles on the fact of, simply, being a woman)

over the course of Victor's struggles with guilt and anxiety, he loses virtually all his independence. in his illness he is rendered unable to do anything on his own and is forced to rely fully on men for survival (Clerval and Walton). he also is resigned to the reliance on men to speak for him: Clerval to intervene with the professors, to steer conversations away from the topic of science to less offensive academia; Walton to command his crew of curious sailors to stop harassing Victor with persistent questions.

the creature could have killed Elizabeth at any time, but instead, he promised it would be the specific date of Victor's wedding-night. this was also, significantly, the last straw for Victor: a punishment for publicly taking on a new distinctly male role of husband

even in his last days, deathly ill and devastated by all the tragedies in his life, he was objectified by a man. to Walton, he was something beautiful and captivating and mysterious, whose secrets must be dug out and conquered, much like Walton thought of the North Pole. despite the fact that Victor himself was in such dire need of help, Walton focused less on how he could meet Victor's needs, and more on how Victor could fulfill Walton's own desires and fill a vacancy in his life, thus relating Victor back to himself. (similar to what Victor had expected of Elizabeth: that she would be his comfort and provide happiness and repose from everything he had gone through, focusing more on how she could "fix" everything when she became his wife and relating her existence to propping up his own)

his deathbed—essentially his coffin—was a ship; at his last, he was walled up by an object historically referred to as female and symbolic of a mother figure

the story of Victor's life itself is relayed to readers not directly, but through the record of Walton. everything he had to say was filtered for the rest of the world through a man. his entire life and legacy was more or less passed into the hands of a man to control how or if it would be shared

imo. my perspective is that this smacks of the experience of a man who isn't respected or recognized as a man by the rest of the world. no matter how he tried to separate himself from connotations of femininity and sought to define himself, he is repeatedly forced back into female roles and viewed through a female lens. at the same time, he both isn't allowed by others and doesn't allow himself genuine connection with female figures in his life, with all the female presences slowly chipped away (losses of his mother, Justine, Elizabeth). in the end, the only woman who finally saw his mind and heart laid bare was Margaret—a woman who Victor never even met

the discomfort and horror aspects come not from the pervading presence of and emphasis on femininity, but from the depiction of how women have faced being pushed into such rigid roles, their emotions and wishes dismissed, or derided and how uncomfortable it is to directly face that reality in witnessing a man be treated that way and how he experiences it for the smothering, draining misery it is. more specifically: the smothering, draining misery of a man whose personal reality of being male seems to be invisible to those around him as he's constantly placed under constraints and expectations ascribed to women. femininity and feminine qualities themselves aren't horrors in the story, but the social response to them and the forcible assignment of them on someone who sees them from the outside as separate from himself are

and thats just my interpretation, which I ofc don't think is the "right" one or even a primary one or incompatible with any other readings