Rob.txt - Blog Posts

i cannot believe the common consensus around here is that walton is boring and less deserving of interest than the other narrators when in his literal introduction hes like. im a daydreamer and hopeless romantic. im an orphan. i love my sister. i went against my fathers dying wishes and pursued life as a seafarer. im self-educated. im illiterate. im a failed poet. im feminine and proud. im into pop culture. i bitterly feel the want of a (boy)friend. im gay.

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]"

victor and elizabeth were not the first grooming case nor the first pseudo-incest relationship in frankenstein: that would be alphonse and caroline.

alphonse was a friend of caroline’s father, beaufort. this is how they met, and so there was a significant difference in their ages. after beaufort dies, alphonse and caroline marry. take a look at how beaufort’s passing is described:

Her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her; and she knelt by Beaufort’s coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.

while "orphan" does not strictly mean the person is a minor, orphan still is most commonly used to describe a minor whose parents are both dead. if we interpret orphan in that sense, then caroline would have been a child when alphonse first took her in. the fact that he waits two years after this event to marry her also hints towards this, almost as if he was waiting for her to become legal and the age of consent. this is further supported by the diminutive language of “poor girl” used to describe her, who is in juxtaposition to the paternal “protecting spirit” of alphonse whom she commits herself into the care of.

even if caroline was not a minor, there was a large enough gap in their ages - and the fact that alphonse “saved” caroline from poverty, creating an economical reliance on him - that there was an unhealthy power balance in their relationship. because of this dynamic, it really does read like grooming: alphonse houses caroline till she is (supposedly) old enough to marry, and by that time she would have been pushed into consenting to the marriage because she relied on him for money and housing, and could have some sort of emotional obligation to him as well for supporting her in a time of need and grief, and he is a significant link to her deceased father. this difference in their ages is highlighted again when victor notes that alphonse was in the decline of his life by the time he and caroline were having children together, and by the time victor is 19 alphonse is old enough that he is physically incapable of traveling to ingolstadt.

in this way their relationship is pseudo-incestous, because alphonse (her father’s age) swoops in to support caroline (a child) after her father dies. this makes himself the father figure replacement, and caroline his daughter. once she is of age she transitions from the role of daughter to wife, and during her marriage caroline will go on to repeat this cycle of abuse, and recreate this same dynamic - except this time, it is in a situation that she can control: through victor and elizabeth.

from the beginning caroline deliberately sets up parallels between herself and elizabeth. she wants a daughter, and adopts elizabeth specifically because elizabeth reminds her of herself, but grander: like she was, elizabeth is also a beggar and an orphan and homeless, but her story is more tragic, she is more beautiful, her debt to her caretakers more extreme, and her romantic relationship will go on to be more explicitly incestous. caroline calls elizabeth her favorite and grooms her into becoming a second version of herself, so that she can recreate the traumatic event of her marriage with her two children.

so, as caroline dictates the marriage between victor and elizabeth, victor becomes to elizabeth what alphonse was to caroline: a man, who is also a familial figure, that she must marry in order to have a stable social and economic life. the frankensteins have provided elizabeth with everything she has, and the threat is there that they can also take it away if she does not comply (through marrying victor), which is the same kind of looming, unspoken threat that hung over caroline and alphonse’s marriage.

AITA for not telling my fiancé I know he’s queer? 

I 20s (F) have a 20s (M) fiancé, V, and he’s been talking about this terrible secret he cannot tell me and he keeps almost starting to come out and then backing out. The issue is V and I were raised together by his parents, and my surrogate 40s (M) father and (now deceased) surrogate mother arranged for our marriage back when we were both children. They thought it was the best for us and at the time we were too young to realize the implications and had no reason to reject to the match. When we were teenagers our mother was on her deathbed and she told us again that she wished for us to marry, and of course we both agreed. However, V is also best friends with a 20s (M) guy called H, and they were nearly inseparable as boys and teens. They also went to university together and shared an apartment but V had to come home due to family reasons. Lately he’s been going out all day and coming home at night hours later. He insists that he’s fine and that we all leave him alone and not worry for him, but I think he and H have been sneaking around. He even delayed our wedding day by arranging a trip to go to England alone with H. It’s exhausting for all of us and I think I should just tell V I know and support him and that we can call off the marriage, but I’m not sure that’s the best course of action? I’m completely fine with not marrying him - he always felt more like a brother to me anyway - but I worry it might come off wrong. The worst part is he’s really beating himself up about it. He’s so guilty it’s beginning to take a toll on his health. I don’t care if he has a boyfriend I just want him to be happy.

EDIT: nvm he built an 8ft creature in his dorm

if victor is the creature's literal father, then by extension the female creature would have been the creature's literal sister. by choosing to break his promise and destroy the bride, victor is breaking the cycle of abuse by refusing to comply to the demand that he dictate a marriage between siblings, like his mother did to him and elizabeth.

i disagree: victor doesnt seem very avoidant to me. he confronts his problems several times and attempts to reach out to others in order to correct its consequences, particularly if we are viewing the creature as the manifestation of these emotions. but when those he looks onto for support fail him (often through no fault of their own - there really is no good outcome), he is forced to take matters into his own hands, even when he is often physically or mentally unable to do so. but instead of ignoring the issue or giving up, he DOES confront it. 

the sole exception to this is after his recovery at ingolstadt - notably after a period of acute mental stress and physical illness - where he chooses to pretend the creature he made a year ago doesnt exist and learns oriental language with henry instead. that is definitely avoidant behavior (but for all victor knows the creature ran off in the forest and died by now, he could be anywhere. what’s he supposed to do?). 

side note: “he should have confronted what he did with the creature and told someone, told Clerval” victor DID. he rambled about the creature to henry “incessantly” during his illness, to no avail - henry either dismisses it as the offspring of his delirium or simply does not press further. this experience (and similar ones he would have afterwards, when he attempts to reach out again) continue to reinforce to victor that he CANT rely on others for support in this regard, because they wont believe him, and thus he has to take matters into his own hands.

however id argue when the consequences come knocking, he still immediately takes action: when william is murdered he returns home to geneva and tells his family he knows the murderer, who dismiss him and so now victor is forced to rely on the justice of the court. when this falls through as justine is unfairly trialed and executed, victor resolves to confront the creature himself and is ready to throw hands.

when they come to an agreement, victor commits to creating a bride for the creature knowing the toll it took on his physical and mental health the first time, and only backs out after realizing it was improbable and nothing would hold the og creature and second creature accountable to the promise and he could just be increasing their potential for violence 2x (there are more complex psychological reasonings behind this as well-namely victor breaking the cycle of abuse-however that’s for another time). either how, risking his health to create a female creature should never have been considered a viable option, and backing out in such an extreme case i wouldnt consider avoidance behavior - it shouldnt be an expectation in the first place. 

afterwards, when henry is killed and victor is released from prison, he chooses to wed elizabeth because he believes the consequence will be either his own life or the creature’s. he knows by marrying elizabeth he will ignite the creature’s rage and murderous tendencies (for him, not elizabeth, victor believes) and instead of avoiding this, either by delaying the marriage or other means, he prepares for this event by arming himself and deciding to kill the creature or die trying, thus ending everything once and for all. when elizabeth is inevitably murdered instead, victor goes to the magistrate for support and tells him everything, who of course does not believe him because what he’s got to say is so improbable - particularly given his history of psychotic illness and believed “madness” - and again victor chooses to face the issue head-on and pursues the creature himself, literally to his own death. 

of course, he doesn’t directly address his other emotional issues, but if, like you said, the creature is a physical representation of victor’s despair and guilt and shame, and when everybody refuses to take him seriously or help when victor begins to reach out about the 8-foot homunculus actively threatening to murder his entire family, then of course he can’t begin to tackle the emotional complexities of his other feelings underneath - that is, his lack of desire to marry elizabeth, his remaining relationship with ernest, etc.

so im of the opinion that victor was by in large not avoidant of his problems/feelings, but he’s seen this way simply because he was ineffectual: i dont think he COULD fix his life, whether he had the fight to do so or not - because despite his efforts, there was simply nothing he could really do given the circumstances he was dealt. he was doomed from the beginning. and that’s really a more disturbing conclusion here - because we are condemning victor for things he could not have possibly changed.

This is not an attack on you at ALL I’m sorry for moving this to it’s own post I just have Opinions™️ and I need be weird about this book rq I’ll tag you anyway in case you’re interested like at all in my dumb little opinion @adrianfridge-main

I just woke up but DISAGREED Victor’s complaining was completely and utterly justified tbh (bro fucked up astronomically big time and as a result his entire family is dead, I think he’s earned the right to be in despair), Victor’s biggest flaw was the fact he stitched together a mass of corpses and brought it to life and then told nobody, Victor’s biggest flaw is avoidance – and part of that is understandable, it’s a common trauma response, but Victor should have been open about how he felt about Elizabeth, he should have worked through his feelings about his family and expressed them, he should have confronted what he did with the creature and told someone, told Clerval, Victor’s biggest flaw isn’t that he’s in despair, it’s that he rarely explains that despair to others – and it’s understandable why he doesn’t, but it’s still wrong, because that’s how he hurts people.

He keeps parts of himself hidden – as arguably represented by the creature himself. He begins to isolate himself for really the first time, he has a lot of space away from people he’s been around his entire life for really the first time, and it’s fairly safe to say that psychological things begin to build up, as he builds the creature, almost represented by him – whatever interpretation you have of these knew-found realisations can greatly vary depending on the reading of the book you have, but personally I think it’s mostly how he feels about himself and his family.

I don’t think Victor wanted to marry Elizabeth at all – and I’ll probably make a whole catch-all rant on that point soon enough, but I think once he actually begins to get some time in isolation to think about things, he starts thinking about his mother, he starts thinking about Elizabeth, he starts considering all these complicated feelings, that he genuinely does love his mother, but that she’s effectively forcing him into something he doesn’t want to do at all, surely she’d understand if he just explained – but she’s dead, he can’t explain, it’s too late for that. Would she have accepted his explanations in the first place, or would he have disappointed her? This was his mother’s only dying wish, the last thing she left to him, the last thing he had to remember her by – and I do believe Victor genuinely loved his mother, even if I’m also absolutely of the opinion that she was a terrible person. Instead of coming to a conclusion about this, Victor spirals, it builds up, he tells no-one – I don’t believe he would’ve told Henry – and this coincides with the creation of the creature. His dead mother’s final wish being the definitive thing haunting him, and the representation of his spiral and all of his emotions about that being a mass of sentient corpses – seems accurate.

Following this argument, Victor sees Clerval again after all those years, and he collapses from the weight of it all – he rants about it vaguely, but he hides it, and he continues to do so, ignoring it, and that’s when it slowly begins to become harmful, purposefully picking off the people he loves and hurting them.

It’s important to remember still, of course, that the monster isn’t metaphorical, he is real – it’s just that a lot of heights of Victor’s despair and tendency to spiral into his own thoughts coincide well with the “building” of the creature, or with him becoming more vocally demanding of Victor or harmful to his loved ones, so he tends to be a pretty good approximation for a physical representation of Frankenstein’s mental state and guilt. And effectively, Frankenstein desperately trying to hide the creature, fumbling with promises to make further mistakes to push him away only to come to the realisation that they’re wrong, but still having to deal with the consequences of them, instead of just from the start being open and honest, even if that honestly was “I need some time to think, and I don’t know how I feel right now.” – that’s his biggest flaw. And the people Victor hurts is really best represented through Elizabeth herself – I hold the very very strong opinion that Victor and Elizabeth are both victims of what was pretty basically just grooming, and again, avoidance is a very common trauma response, but Elizabeth tried to confront Victor on multiple occasions, sending that letter asking about how he feels about the marriage, saying it doesn’t need to happen if he doesn’t want it to – instead he misinterprets this as his poor dear cousin in despair second-guessing his affections for her, (very likely because of things his mother probably told him as a child), and decides to “put her mind at ease” by telling her that he will marry her, despite his actions saying completely otherwise and Elizabeth herself pretty openly not really wanting to marry him.

He’s gone through so much at this point, feels himself responsible for so many deaths, and decides the final thing he needs to do before he dies is not to be a disgrace to his parents as well, or any more of a disgrace than he already is, in his eyes.

And I also definitely have a queer reading of the novel – I genuinely do really hold to the interpretation of Frankenstein and Clerval’s relationship being romantic, and from there and concerning the creation of the bride, Henry really is effectively murdered as a punishment for Victor doubting the role given to him – almost like his doubts and guilt, as embodied by the creature, overwhelm him in that way. “Ah! my father, do not remain in this wretched country; take me where I may forget myself, my existence, and all the world.” He’s pushing away the memory of Clerval’s death, repressing it, avoiding it, and that is extremely important for how he shifts his tone with Elizabeth and puts up that fake demeanour of wanting to marry her, because he thinks it’ll make her happy even though both of them describe dreading the wedding, even given the context for Victor and even by Elizabeth, who doesn’t know what he dreads – in order to forget Clerval, he assigns himself to the role given to him as a child by marrying Elizabeth and gives up whatever he hope he had.

All possibly discouraged from Clerval being murdered as a response to Victor refusing to finish the Bride and subject her to the same fate as him and Elizabeth to the Creature, a pact made without her knowledge or consent, an arranged marriage. Where has spiting that tradition led him? Where has him standing up to the shroud of his mother’s dying wishes, hanging over him the entire novel thus far, led him, by refusing to force the Bride into an arranged marriage with the Creature, as he was with Elizabeth? To the death of the one man he truly loved. So, can at least “make his dear cousin happy” and not die spiting the one thing he was meant to do – make his mother proud from beyond the grave by marrying Elizabeth.

And even then, adding to my argument of the creature being a physical embodiment of Frankenstein‘s guilt and dread – that building tension approaching the wedding, Victor being convinced the creature is going to kill him, but he kills Elizabeth – that’s a metaphor if I’ve ever seen it.

Even on the subject of grieving Clerval, Victor won’t sort his feelings, he spirals and tries so desperately to avoid them. “We had resolved not to go to London, but to cross the country to Portsmouth, and thence to embark for Havre. I preferred this plan principally because I dreaded to see again those places in which I had enjoyed a few moments of tranquillity with my beloved Clerval. I thought with horror of seeing again those persons whom we had been accustomed to visit together, and who might make inquiries concerning an event.”

I wonder what would happen if he did go through London, if he did meet those people again. Would things have turned out differently? Would he finally have been given a sense of comfort and clarity through mutual grief, as nobody so far since Henry’s death and for the rest of the book, except the creature, ironically, has grieved for Clerval except for Frankenstein. If he met people who took as fondly to Clerval as he did, at least on meeting him briefly, who would have sympathy towards Victor – would he finally have that space to grieve for him in a healthy way, to be comforted by people who at least vaguely understand a fraction of his anguish?

But he doesn’t, and instead he avoids the subject – confining himself to his union with Elizabeth, and hurting her because of that.

And even to his grave, Frankenstein doesn’t stop to consider his feelings properly, and by that I mean he doesn’t sort them with anyone, he doesn’t admit the dread he feels surrounding his family and his late wife, he doesn’t stay with Ernest and talk through things with him, bonding to his last remaining family member in his grief – instead he spirals again, chasing the monster and telling no one, except for Walton. And even then, he doesn’t discuss, he monologues – he doesn’t talk through his emotions with a trusted friend, he “tells his story” to an eager man who is mostly overwhelmingly curious, rather than genuinely concerned.

Victor Frankenstein’s biggest flaw is not that he complains. It isn’t that he’s in despair – it’s that he won’t articulate that despair properly. It’s that he avoids it and keeps it hidden out of pain, but he shouldn’t. Because the subject of that despair actively effects the people around him, and by extension, his despair actively effects the people around him. Elizabeth is left hanging by a man who doesn’t truly love her and won’t talk to her, forcing her into a marriage she doesn’t really want out of duty. The creature is cast aside and abandoned, viewed mostly by Victor as a representation of his guilt and shame, of his worst mistakes, although he expresses feeling pity for it fairly often, he still hides and shuns it, fearing it. Clerval is murdered as a representation of that hope for a better future, the one man who ever truly loved him being snatched away, and instead of standing his ground, coming to the conclusion that he won’t abide by his mother’s wishes, that he was right in his destruction of the bride, grieving Clerval with those people in London and using his death as a catalyst to not let it happen again, perhaps then meeting Walton at a later date if he chose to stay in England or otherwise by chance under different circumstances, writing to Elizabeth telling her his true feelings and confronting the creature properly, pulling a Christine Daaé there except like. Parentally instead of romantically. and showing his creation sympathy and compassion rather than just feeling it, and being open about everything; instead of that, Victor spirals, and Victor hurts everyone left.

And it’s understandable why he does – it’s realistic. The hero doesn’t always know exactly what to do and magically save the day by making all the right decisions – people don’t know what do do or how to make all the right decisions. Victor isn’t just complaining “woe-is-me” style, Victor is in genuine severe psychological torment and distress, and his actions reflect that. He is, to an extent, a victim of circumstance – and his circumstances haven’t made things easy for him. In his grief over Clerval, he’s led back to Geneva by his father instead of through London, and follows easily. He’s forced into a situation where he has to marry his cousin by his mother, since young childhood. When he tries to be assertive in what he wants, he’s punished for it every time. In real life, people don’t fix their situation easily like a superhero and pull themselves on their feet like that. They don’t get over everything that’s ever happened to them easily. They need space – and Frankenstein did not have space. If he wanted to fix his life, he would have had to actively fight for it. And he didn’t have any fight left. He didn’t want to live. He didn’t have any idea of what to do next. He didn’t see a future. Any time he tried to fight against what was expected of him, he was punished for it, so now that his life was effectively over, all he wanted to do was assign himself to the roles he was “meant” to perform, and not disappoint his family.

But it’s still a flaw, and it still hurts people. Victor was still in the wrong for what he did. For avoiding everything, for building the creature to begin with, that was Victor’s fault. But it’s understandable why he does what he does, and he’s a very sympathetic character because of that.

Me waking up to immediately write an entire Frankenstein essay I shit you not I’m still in bed finishing this I literally just woke up and started typing half asleep until I finished it (haha funny Nosferatu reference):

”finally got my degree so now i can say im smarter/better than college dropout victor frankenstein” no you arent. victor went from being the equivalent of an aspiring astronaut studying astronomy to having the 1790s version of two PHDs in chemistry and biology and was well on his way to a third in oriental languages when he HAD to stop - literally because his brother was murdered. all during a time period where going to university was widely considered optional and/or extracurricular!

anyway like. walton in the beginning says he dislikes the typical masculine crassness and brutality associated with sailors, because he was raised under the "feminine fosterage" of margaret, and then goes on for pages about how he wants a "friend whose eyes reply to his" or whatever, and that he found something close to this in his lieutenant specifically because his lieutenant has traditionally feminine virtues (dont remember exactly but it was gentleness, kind-heartedness, etc) and then this friend that hes been waiting for all along turns out to be victor. all this to say victor and walton are t4t

this is what waltonstein is to me

we all know modern day victor would have been making those shane dawson-style conspiracy theory/hoax challenge videos. im talking “MAKING A CREATURE 3AM CHALLENGE 🧌😰 *NOT CLICKBAIT*” while shitty lightning SFX play in the background. those content creators who made those potion videos where you drank some godawful concoction of salt and coca cola or whatever would have been his magnus and agrippa. he would have believed in them wholeheartedly and thought he was just doing it wrong

the best thing about frankenstein is he was basically like one of those ppl that gets sucked into conspiracy theories like geocentrism and stuff and then he went to college and realized he was totally wrong about everything

robert walton laid down in his bed and wrote every letter gushing about victor to margaret in this pose

been sitting on this for awhile because its a bit controversial, but its one of the main reasons i was pushed into the frankenstein fandom space so i figured it was high time to talk about it

ive noticed that theres this general opinion, both among scholars and present in more fandom-y spaces, that victor is somehow effeminate for what are ultimately symptoms of disability (fainting spells, being bedridden, hysteria, etc) as if being physically or mentally ill is something that is inherently feminine. i have read articles published by academics that victor’s sickness is proof of his “femininity,” which is why he wants to take on the traditional part of a woman, that is, childbirth (via creature)

even in general, and not on an academic level, it emerges in jokes or memes all over the place — people poking at victor for being weak, or sick, or a gay little UWU bean sub, because aw hes fainting all the time XD and he’s sooo dramatic! as if these things were somehow both his choice, and somehow innately feminine

so, not only is there this weird link people are attempting to draw between disability and femininity, but also queerness (particularly, ive noticed, being a “bottom” or “sub” — but thats a whole separate can of worms) and femininity. as if being either of these things is inherently girly or cutesy and thus worthy of being made fun of

there comes a point (particularly when these interpretations leak into broader understandings of something via pop culture), where, for lack of a better word, it comes off as fetishizing or romanticizing queerness and/or queer relationships

and while this may seem relatively harmless on the surface and comes off as just thoughtless jokes made in bad taste, it IS serious. not just within the context of frankenstein, but the general premise of the severity that even subconscious reinforcement of detrimental and stereotypical ideas should be treated with. its a slippery slope from jokes to notions that affect you and how you see the world

this is obviously part of a broader problem with the way disability, gender, identity and etc is thought about and taught, which results in people harboring all sorts of these types of underlying prejudices. its just that victor happens to be a particularly good example, wherein he is a feminized man that is ascribed as “weak,” and the attribute “weak” is ascribed to someone who has been historically analyzed as both disabled and queer. this has been reinforced for decades, and i feel like this treatment of his character in this way is so blatantly obvious and runs rampant while it goes nearly entirely unchecked — and also in the case of frankenstein discourse, its often a quadruple whammy (ableism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia)

and the worst part is that it is so often completely unintentional, and the bulk of this sort of content are well-meaning jokes. i genuinely don’t think people do this in bad faith or out of malice, but spreading these concepts even in formats that appear to be harmless (jokes, memes) just contribute to and continue to spread these ideas and stereotypes. its frustrating because its hard to point out and bring attention to without coming off as nitpicky or overly sensitive because this sort of thing is just so SUBTLE, and these beliefs are so gradually learned and then reinforced on a subconscious level

i could go on but for risk of sounding redundant ill digress, however to be clear this is not me saying you cant view victor as transfem, or disabled, or queer (i do!), or to view him as feminine, or etc, but that you should look at the reasons for WHY you think so, and how you or others treat the subject when talking about it.

[DNI if: approx. 8 foot tall, yellow skin, shriveled complexion, straight black lips, flowing hair, teeth of a pearly whiteness, watery eyes] [TW: mentioned graverobbing, unethical science, parental abandonment, child death, murder]

she franken on my stein till i beautiful! great god! his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

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.

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—

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

in all of the frankenstein analysis ive read here, be it you interpret the creature as ugly or only uncanny valley or just a baby with scary eyes, ive not once seen someone mention this line, just after the creature’s awakening:

like?? this should be pivotal, shouldn’t it? that victor acknowledged that the creature was ugly before he brought him to 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)

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

imagine: picture of henry and walton staring at each other intensely. captioned “team jacob vs team edward”

victor frankenstein was not only a man but also a woman and a girl

forever funny to me that when lamenting on henry’s death victor reminisces on how long his eyelashes were. and the word choice of ORBS. bro had it bad

soft jazz music plays as the love of walton’s life enters on-stage, the world goes all pink and slo-mo and dreamy. record scratch, pans to victor frankenstein coughing up a hairball

straight friend groups: (brunette girl) (frat boy) (“the funny one”) (kyle) (blonde girl)

gay friend groups: (The Modern Prometheus) (The 8-Foot Homunculus) (The Beautiful Italian Orphan) (The Poet Boyfriend) (The Falsely Accused) (The Gay Sailor) (Th

imagine if victor frankenstein was a modern day influencer. he records an unboxing video for his youtube channel (account name “the modern prometheus”) and he’s like “hi re-animators! before the video starts, make sure to hit that red subscribe button down below if you want more content like this. today we will be unboxing…” and then the camera pans over to a person lying on an autopsy table

every night after bringing people back to life in his basement laboratory herbert curls up in a wicker basket with a blanket at dans feet next to a ball of yarn 

it’s come to my attention that apparently there’s a kanye west adaptation of the re-animator novelization and i couldn’t bear the burden of this awful information alone:

look at it... and its got such impassioned reviews too:

she herbert on my west till my dan cain

henry clerval is like the dog they put in with cheetahs to keep them from going crazy (victor is the cheetah threatening to go crazy)