One of the salient features of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is its obsession with the body. Frankenstein’s Creature itself, of course, is constructed of myriad parts scavenged from “the dissecting room and the slaughter-house” (Shelley 35) to form one whole. The various scenes of horror in the novel are attended by an almost erotic fixation on physicality, and nowhere is this more present than when death is present or impending in the narrative. This characteristic further problematizes the already ambiguous and socially deviant sexuality brimming just underneath Frankenstein’s surface, and in fact, the two traits are inseparable. Death is eroticized, and because death is the great equalizer among ages and genders, there is something inherently queer about its presence in the novel. At the locus of this queerness is the Creature itself, who, defying categorization, is simultaneously dead and alive, both victim and aggressor. The story then becomes a homoerotic power struggle between creature and creator, as both endeavor to take the dominant role in their relationship while dealing with the spectre of submission.
Ironically, in order for the queer sexuality of the novel’s central male characters to be parsed, an egregiously idealized, aggressively heterosexual representation of female death within the novel must be examined. This death is that of Caroline Frankenstein, Victor’s mother. Scholar Lauryn Angel-Cann notes that Caroline is the ultimate female subservient figure, spending her entire life in servitude to men: “when Alphonse Frankenstein first encounters her, she has devoted herself to the nursing of her terminally-ill father; when her father dies, she passes directly into the care of Alphonse by becoming his wife and devoting herself now to the care of her husband and children” (27). This endlessly caring disposition ends up being her undoing; when Elizabeth Lavenza sickens with scarlet fever, she takes it upon herself to care for her, only to contract the illness herself. She is characteristically impassive in the face of the ordeal: “On her death-bed the fortitude and benignity of this admirable woman did not desert her…she died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death” (Shelley 26). Even as she expresses her regret at leaving Victor and Elizabeth behind, Caroline tells herself, “these thoughts are not befitting me; I will endeavor to resign myself cheerfully to death” (Shelley 26). Victor’s mother succumbs to mortality beautifully and passively, forever frozen in a state of ultimate submission.
The image of Caroline’s deceased, prone body is one that stays firmly imprinted in Victor’s mind and influences him for the rest of the novel. His mixed response is especially notable. Overtly, he experiences a kind of mourning sorrow that appears to be properly banished with time, describing his emotions with what amounts to a cocktail of platitudes: “I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil…the time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished” (Shelley 26). Victor seems almost defensive about proving that he has moved on from Caroline’s death, yet betrays himself by describing said death as an “irreparable evil.” As all those even remotely familiar with the Frankenstein story know, it is precisely this evil that he endeavors to repair with his experiments. Here, his latent attraction to the passive feminine ideal that his mother’s corpse represents becomes evident. Scholar Emma Liggins points out in her analysis that Victor “records his fascination and obsession with science, an interest that borders on the erotic and is to far exceed the strength of his sexual feelings for his fiancée, Elizabeth” (135), and that his professors inadvertently encourage this attitude by characterizing “nature as a feminine form, ready and waiting to be unveiled by the masculine figure of science” (135). According to Liggins, this manifests itself most strongly in Victor’s pursuit of body parts upon which to conduct his experiments, which he characterizes explicitly as a scandalous invasion of “unhallowed damps,” suggesting female genitals (136). Despite his human horror with the subject, he cannot help but pursue death with a fervor that far outstrips anything he may feel for the still-living Elizabeth; repeatedly he characterizes their impending marriage as a mere “duty” (Shelley 26-7).
Of course, Victor insists that “my limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (Shelley 35). He describes his desires as an abnormal “passing trance” (Shelley 35), unwilling to consider the possibility that they may be a reflection upon his fundamental character. Nevertheless, he meticulously puts his Creature together, admitting that “his limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful” (Shelley 37). Even his atypical physical symptoms that occur, such as fever and excessive nervousness, only seem to have their onset when his project is nearing completion. It is at the very moment that the Creature is imbued with life and begins to stir that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 37). Shortly after he flees, Victor has an Oedipal nightmare:
I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the graveworms crawling in the folds of the flannel. (Shelley 37)
Victor starts from this dream and immediately sees the Creature. This incident seems to suggest that Elizabeth, Caroline, and the monster are inextricably linked, and the more obvious interpretation of the dream itself is that Victor would prefer his dead mother over his living fiancée. Combined with his attitude towards his project before and after its completion, and the insinuation becomes inescapable: he has developed a psychosexual obsession with death, likely stemming from the trauma of losing his mother.
This understanding, of course, inexorably alters the way the relationship between Victor and the Creature is read. Their bond becomes homoerotic in nature, with Victor having created his monster to fulfill a need to intimately connect with a dead body in a way that would normally be impossible. Paradoxically, it is the experiment’s very deadness and therefore implied passivity that he is attracted to in the first place. This attraction is complicated once the Creature comes to life and has agency, and it is significant that when Victor awakens from his nightmare, the first thing he sees is his “beautiful” living corpse looming over him in his own bed. In his analysis of Lynd Ward’s engravings for the 1934 deluxe edition of Frankenstein, Grant F. Scott notes that this part of the novel “inverts the hierarchy of the initial animation scene” (408) and specifically finds that the accompanying illustration, which emphasizes the Creature’s “contoured muscular chest” (411) and “illuminated curve of the penis” (408), works with the text of the novel to imply “Victor’s thrilling revulsion over the prospect of physical intimacy with his creature and the threat of violence that this union implies” (411). Though he, consciously or otherwise, desires to have this union, he cannot bear the thought of taking the passive role, even to his perfect partner. This is the heart of how it is possible that “dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!” (Shelley 38)
These complex mixed feelings inform every interaction, direct or indirect, that Victor and his creation have for the rest of the novel. When he next sees the Creature, he is overtaken by an intense desire to have a physical brawl with him “in which one must fall” (Shelley 73), even physically attempting to jump upon him and wrestle him into submission (Shelley 72). Victor burns to not merely destroy but to completely and utterly dominate his Adam. When the Creature in turn places “his hated hands” (74) within his creator’s line of vision willingly, the man throws them aside “with violence” (74). What sparse touch occurs between the two is always characterized by pursuit and rejection. Victor aspires to touch his monster, chasing it and seeking to assault it so that he may perform the ultimate act of corrective rape by returning it to the unresponsive and submissive corpse it once was. The Creature, defying its very nature, easily escapes these attempts and in turn reaches for his creator, who then draws back in disgust and fear. The homoerotic game of tug-of-war continues between them indefinitely to the end of the novel, able to end only in death.
The Creature, wishing to prolong Victor’s suffering, largely makes indirect assaults rather than behaving violently towards his bodily form, but these are nevertheless attacks on his masculine identity. This can be subtly but clearly seen with the murder of William Frankenstein. Once again commenting upon the accompanying illustration by Lynd Ward, Scott observes of this scene that “Ward implies a sexual crime by darkening the tone of the print, sinking the action beneath the surface of the ground, obscuring both figures’ faces, and representing the creature’s arousal in the phallic extension of his left leg. This is dark retribution indeed, shading into pedophilia” (429). Scholar Leanne MacDonald finds that the text supports this reading, paying special attention to how Alphonse describes “the print of the murderer’s finger…on [William’s] neck” (Shelley 49). The significance of this, she argues, is that although “there is no explicitly sexual language…penetration of the creature’s hands into the flesh of a vulnerable victim is nevertheless suggestive” (MacDonald 51). It seems especially significant that this first victim is a Frankenstein, but a boy rather than a man – perhaps seen symbolically by the Creature as a desexed Victor ripe for violation. The idea of harming William, after all, only comes to him after he hears that he is related to his creator, upon which he exclaims “you belong then to my enemy” (Shelley 109). Children, under this paradigm, have not yet attained masculinity and must belong, and the act of fatal molestation occurs when the Creature decides that William will belong to him rather than to the Frankenstein family. His words after the murder also bear weight; he finds himself exclaiming “my enemy is not impregnable” (Shelley 109). Though the literal meaning of “impregnable” is “that cannot be overcome or vanquished” (“impregnable, adj. and n.”), it also suggests by its sound the word “impregnate”. By destroying William, the Creature is symbolically committing an act of sexual force against Victor that, if he had a womb, would lead to his insemination.
The murder of Henry Clerval, though generally given less weight in criticism, is similarly suggestive. The corpse is first discovered when a fisherman strikes his foot against it and falls “all his length” (Shelley 137) upon it, the choice of phrasing and especially the emphasis on “length” suggesting a phallic penetration of a submissive object. Even as the body is being examined, the locals note that “he appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age” (Shelley 137). Clerval is being assessed and objectified almost as an object of the male gaze, with the level of his physical attractiveness apparently a factor in his worth as a victim and therefore the sympathy his death excites. Likewise, when Victor himself is taken to seen the corpse, he describes his own reaction as such: “…I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me. I gasped for breath; and, throwing myself on the body, I exclaimed, ‘Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life?’” (Shelley 138) Once again we a prone body lying horizontally and an actor falling upon that body, gasping the other’s name as if in the throes of orgasm. As Liggins writes, “his desires are activated by the very bodies he has taught himself to regard with a horror only just controlled by medical detachment” (140). Victor explicitly conflates the Creature’s assault on his friend with his own actions; because the Creature has violated Clerval, and Victor is responsible for the Creature’s existence (and, by extension, its perversion), the violation is effectively his own. When he falls into sleep, he guilty dreams of “the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck” (Shelley 138). The union he desires and yet fears occurs in his subconscious as if to punish him.
The final and most suggestive murder, however, is that of Elizabeth Lavenza Frankenstein. Infamously, when the Creature utters the threat “I shall be with you on your wedding-night” (Shelley 131), Victor takes it to be made against his own person and not his bride-to-be’s. This suggests two latent desires on his part. The first of these is that he desires in some way to directly be the Creature’s victim, and is even daring to fantasize of such. The second, as Angel-Cann points out, is that “the creature is actually performing acts that Victor does not have the courage to perform for himself. His true inclination…is to see Elizabeth dead, to bring death to her as she brought death to his mother” (37). Angel-Cann attributes this “true inclination” to Victor’s anxiety regarding proper heterosexual performance and his buried resentment of Elizabeth’s role in Caroline’s demise; while this may well be true, in context, it also seems to be an ultimate expression of necrophiliac need, stemming from the trauma of the mother’s death. The scene itself is strongly eroticized; Victor’s notice is first aroused when he hears a “shrill and dreadful scream” (Shelley 154) issuing from Elizabeth’s room, and when he views the dead body with his own eyes, he reports:
She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Every where I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this, and live? Alas! Life is obstinate, and clings closest where it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fainted. (Shelley 154)
The attention to Elizabeth’s exact posture here is hard to ignore. MacDonald notices the scene’s similarity to a painting Mary Shelley would have certainly been familiar with, Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” (51). Scott’s commentary references this same painting and suggest that Lynd Ward’s accompanying illustration intentionally has this image in mind in its depiction of Elizabeth’s death when it “drapes a languorous figure across the bed, her form falling provacatively towards the viewer. Her body is certainly ‘relaxed’ as Mary Shelley writes, but in a state of post-coital abandon rather than mutilated death” (438). The bride’s scream just before her discovery supports this interpretation, symbolically becoming one of orgasm rather than (or perhaps along with) terror.
Scott correctly notices that the scene seems to deliberately reference the earlier Oedipal dream in which the bridal Elizabeth transforms into the rotting Caroline. On a dramatic level, the nightmare at this point becomes prophetic, but the reader’s attention is also drawn to how this scene is both like and differs from that initial eroticized female death. Elizabeth’s murder becomes a compliment to and a fevered parody of Caroline’s passing; Victor’s mother gives herself to death willingly, if reluctantly, the perfect and innocent picture of submission, but Elizabeth’s subservience is only wrought through force, Victor’s eyes gazing not on the softness of her features or the purity of her expression, but on her vulgar physicality, splayed limbs and disheveled hair. MacDonald succinctly writes that “it is not difficult to imagine that the monster has literally raped Elizabeth before Victor’s entrance” (51). This is the final and boldest act of indirect violence towards Frankenstein’s personhood, for the Creature “has usurped his position of dominance over Elizabeth on his wedding night, as should be his right” (MacDonald 51). Because he has taken what would have been Victor’s to use, as well as imply what he is capable of doing to Victor directly, he has in effect committed a double-rape against him. Scott is correct in his assessment that “[Elizabeth] functions as a conduit for the homoerotic bond between them” (440).
The Creature’s apparent eagerness to participate in this dynamic with his creator may seem puzzling at first. Despite the undeniable symbolic and psychic link between them, their life experiences are not at all the same; Victor is accustomed to the loving embrace of family, and trauma in this family has caused his necrophiliac tendencies, while the Creature has been alone and abhorred from the beginning. He too, however, has had experiences that have caused him to associate his own state of being as a living corpse with a double state of sexual aggression and submission. The first direct encounter with a human being he has is with an old man, who “perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable” (Shelley 78). The old man’s shriveled form, far past its period of sexual potency, specifically captures the Creature’s attention almost as starkly as his flight itself. When he attempts to enter a village, he comes across similar results, with women and children screaming and fainting respectively. Suspiciously, while he mentions that some of the villagers attack him, he does not specify gender, leading the reader to conclude that the aggressive parties are men since he did make a distinction with the two other heteronormative “categories” (Shelley 78).
Speculation aside, the Creature certainly becomes aware of gender norms by watching the De Laceys over time. His first observation upon seeing Agatha and Felix is that “the girl was young and of gentle demeanor…as she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head, and bore it to the cottage himself” (Shelley 79). What he sees is a subtle but salient display of male dominance over a weaker, submissive female. This trend continues when he spies upon the elder De Lacey playing music: “….she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her, and smiled with such kindness and affection, that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure” (Shelley 80). The obvious interpretation is that the Creature envies the affection that Agatha is able to obtain from her own father. It is this envy, however, that allows him to identify with Agatha’s submission in the patriarchal family structure. The Creature, at this point, understands that he is to be acted upon rather than to act, and even desires as much if it is done so benevolently. At the same time, he understands that unlike the beautiful Agatha, he is horribly deformed, and after learning how to read finally comes to understand his own nature as a reanimated corpse by finding laboratory papers written by Victor (Shelley 99). He sees himself at last as the dead female figure, both reviled and doomed to submit to men’s aggression. This viewpoint is further confirmed when he is attacked by Felix De Lacey, whom he had previously admired. The penis-like imagery is palpable as “in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with a stick” (Shelley 103), something that both Lynd Ward and Grant F. Scott notice when the latter comments on the former’s corresponding engraving, “the creature’s prone position on the ground, combined with the phallic cord of wood raised aloft by Felix and the fact that both characters are shown with their legs spread apart, persuade us that what we see…is a violent rape” (425). It is after this traumatic moment that the Creature rebels against his designated role as passive corpse and declares “everlasting war against the species” (Shelley 104). Shortly after, he commits his first murder and begins his game with Victor.
The game, impossible as it is, cannot be resolved except by death. Victor is unable to reconcile his desire for his Creature with his fear of being dominated, and the Creature’s existence itself is an inherently contradictory state. Frankenstein, therefore, dies in his pursuit. Walton eroticizes the dying Victor just as Victor once did his own mother: “must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who with sympathize with and love me” (Shelley 167). When he finally passes, like Caroline, he does so with “a gentle smile” (Shelley 174). It is only at this point that the Creature can finally express his own feelings for his creator:
…he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion.
“That is also my victim!” he exclaimed; “in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me.” (Shelley 175)
The Creature finally has what he wanted: complete dominance over Victor, who is now as dead, unresponsive and idealized as Caroline. His use of the word “consummated,” suggestive also of sexual relations between a husband and wife, is a telltale sign. Yet his own desire to submit happily and without fear is not and can never be fulfilled, as he admits when he tells Walton, with the same choice of words, “neither your’s nor any man’s death is needed to consummate the series of my being, and accomplish that which must be done; but it requires my own” (Shelley 178). With no other choice, the Creature chooses to once again become what he once was: an unfeeling corpse, incapable of any kind of agency at all.
Victor’s fixation on erotic death, developed early in the novel, is the starting point from which the rest of Frankenstein’s events flow. The Creature both struggles with and longs to accept his role as passive corpse, while Victor in turns aggressively pursues and runs from the sexual threat of his creation’s body. The novel’s various comments on gender and allusions to homoerotic relationships fall in place when viewed through this lens, and cause the ending to fall into perspective: the living-dead body is an unresolvable contradiction that can only be made right through its death, and the deaths of those who might pursue it.
Works Cited
Angel-Cann, Lauryn. Stretched Out On Her Grave: The Evolution of a Perversion. Dissertation, University of North Texas, 2000. UMI, 1408049.
“impregnable, adj. and n.” OED Online, March 2017, http://www.oed.com.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/view/Entry/92684?redirectedFrom=impregnable&. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Liggins, Emma. “The Medical Gaze and the Female Corpse: Looking at Bodies in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 32, no. 2, 2000, pp. 129-146, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533387. Accessed 8 May 2017.
MacDonald, Leanne. “Vegetable Love: Reimagining Sexuality in Frankenstein and ‘Christabel.’” Atenea, vol. 35, no. 1-2, 2015, pp. 43-59, http://go.galegroup.com.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A458572216&v=2.1&u=csuf_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&authCount=1. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Scott, Grant F. “Victor’s Secret: Queer Gothic in Lynd Ward’s Illustrations to Frankenstein” (1934).” Frankenstein, edited by Johanna M. Smith, 3rd ed., Bedford/St Martin’s, 2015, pp. 400-445.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Edited by Johanna M. Smith, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2000.