Aug 12
Two things I believe in are:
1. Don’t use modern standards of social behavior to try and determine the queer-ness of people living in the societies of the past.
2. Don’t assume that because two men have an intimate friendship they must be gay.
These rules do not apply to Robert Walton, though.
Robert Walton jumps into the first pages of Frankenstein to let us know that a) he loves ships, and b) Victor Frankenstein is attractive and intelligent. Then he goes on to describe Victor as “being now even in wreck” and as “the gallant vessel.”
Robert Walton actually is a 21st century gay man who somehow wandered into Mary Shelley’s brain.
