Title: Creature Comforts

Author: Nancy Kilpatrick

Date of First Publication: 1994

Place of Publication: The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein

Type: Short story

Characters: The Creature

Themes: SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; QUEER FRANKENSTEIN

Critical Summary: Candy, real name Elizabeth, has been a fan of the band Monster since they debuted. Playing British punk, they made it big in America in the underground music scene. Creature, the lead singer, was a gothic icon, complete with the height, youth, and makeup that went with the era. His scars made him attractive to the girls, but especially attractive to Candy. She fantasizes about him as he performs. She fakes that she is going to interview him and demands to see him. The Creature, though a recluse, agrees. She gets taken back to his candle-lit dressing room and pretends to interview him.

Creature tells Candy about his creation two centuries before. He describes a similar story to Shelley’s Frankenstein, going as far as to refer to her collecting his story from Walton. However, he claims she got the story wrong. Victor made the Creature for Elizabeth because he himself was impotent. He became bitter about his inadequacy and created the Creature for a lover. On the wedding night, when Elizabeth tried to take the Creature (unknown to her that it was in fact Creature, as he resembled Victor in all ways but size), she screamed. Victor, coming out hiding, attacks the Creature and kills Elizabeth. He tells Candy that she resembles the blond-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth of his memory. With her sympathy on his side, they start to have sex. When she says no, however, he keeps going, eventually raping and strangling her. She calls him a monster with her last breath.

This is a modern Creature story. Creature is written to be sympathetic until he rapes and kills Candy. Still, there is a lot of positive praise for Creature as, for example, as a punk era “dream boy.” The two men sharing Elizabeth, with the Creature as a vicarious “potent” male replacement for Victor, and the later violence against Candy, mark an “out of bounds” sexuality in the text.

Administrative Notes:  Noelle Simonne Zaffiro, CSUF; Amanda Howard (editing)