While perusing the web, I came across something fascinating.

My feminist radar went into red alert as I came across this Tumblr post! It expresses one of the most thought-provoking insights on Frankenstein.

A few thoughts on Frankenstein from my lens:

Victor wanted the ultimate power of creation without the “inconvenience” of a female. He took on many of the ‘female’ aspects.

He figuratively displays many traits of a biological mother—he undergoes an agonizing “labor,” brings life into the world, and then suffers the ultimate case of ‘postpartum’ biochemical havoc.

Victor’s Post Partum Terror

The realization of what he did set in like a fireworks display.

The moment the ‘mad scientist thrill of creating’ subsided, as the brain blitz of seeing this wild plan through to completion was over; as things were trying to ‘normalize, ‘ Victor finally realized what he created.

This realization caused him to explode with blasts of sheer horror, fainting and panicking.

I think Victor realized, on some level, that beyond the scientific achievement of ‘creating’ the impossible, he also created the ‘reflection’ of what he truly is – the male monster. (As a child resembles a parent, this ‘hideous monster’ resembles Victor’s true nature as a hideous monster.)

Enter: A Display of Total Femme Phobia that destroys Victor.

At one point, the ‘monster’ begs Victor to build him a female companion.

Victor starts building her, but halfway through, he panics and rips her to shreds.

Who is the real monster now? Patriarchal Panic Set In.

I believe the real monster here is a femme-phobic man, and all that ensues from his unadulterated anger, hate, and panic, realizing he can’t control a woman.

He could not accept that a female monster, to be created, would claim free will – just like a real woman.

He realized she might have her own desires and will that he cannot dominate.

Tragic – on so many levels.

I am winding up this look at Frankenstein here because analyzing this can go on for chapters, trust me. I am munching on potato chips as I write – bad sign…literary comfort zone signal…it means I can ‘stay with this’ for a big while longer. Feminist writers? Digging into literary plots? Yes, I can stay with those topics for hours, (Semesters long,lol. Ring a bell?)

Every time one looks deeper into the makings of a plot, the inner workings of a writer, and the signs of the times the book emerged from, rabbit holes appear everywhere. Tangents spring up, and the winds of thought bring in new insights… a never-ending experience.

I am fascinated not only by literature but by human nature, its expression, and the human experience. Call it curiosity or marginalia gossip, it’s true.

That being said, I find the feminist take (with all that it can entail) a fascinating lens when doing a close-up on certain pieces of literature. Any look at the inner workings of writers, as well as what traumas and experiences drove their writing, is interesting. What can I say? I want to know, lol….

Many curious readers, fellow marginalia gossip queens, as well as the bookworms, literature divas, and feminist pens out there, might share this interest as well.

For that reason, I have added a Totally Booked section to this post – with relevant literary fine reads.

Totally Booked

Totally Booked on Erratica:

Totally Booked posts on Erratica suggest the best books

• to build up your tsundoku
• to find books to devour and
• to take advantage of great deals on classics that no culturati, avid reader, or literature diva should miss.

Symptom: You resonated with the topic of this post. (Or a curious literary gossip queen, like me?) Remedy: You should add these two classic feminist reads to your bedside table immediately:

• “Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters” by Anne K. Mellor
  • The Gist: Mellor presents Mary Shelley in a very revealing and intricately woven biography. She also presents a literary criticism of Shelley’s work, including Shelley’s other works that are frequently overlooked. The book is expensive, but last I looked, there are paperback versions available on Amazon at a good price.
• “Literary Women” by Ellen Moers
  • The Vibe: The groundbreaking book that coined the term “Female Gothic.” Moers reframes the whole novel as a raw, dark “birth myth”—tying Victor’s anxieties directly to the messy, scary realities of motherhood and bodily autonomy. She also delivers a fascinating take on women writers – focusing on how being a woman influenced their thought, their work and their personal lives.

This interpretation of Frankenstein being feminized also ties in heavily with the book I am reading by Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies. Miller discusses writers and offers stunning examples of how their writing is woven with the traumas these writers carried from childhood regarding the parenting they received.

I link this with Shelley’s portrayal of Victor Frankenstein. Her display of his feminized ‘symptoms’ is operatic. It sings; it’s an aria expressing her trauma – as a woman, as a child who was deprived of a mother, as a daughter wounded by an often cruel and emotionally trying relationship with her father, as a young mother who lost children of her own, and as a daughter of a thinking feminist who left her with revolutionary ideas in writing. (Seen as revolutionary at the time. Maybe they are still revolutionary – because beyond the tempest in the tea cup we really haven’t ’emancipated’).