Snake and Mouse

what the people want, the people get

you see

my professor’s take is that mary shelley is feminizing victor throughout the novel, as a way of flipping gender roles and putting a male character through female experiences.

evidence as explained:

victor is creating life. he is putting his health at risk (spends two years with little sleep or socialization) to bring life forth into this world

his illness after he is shocked by the creature coming to life is akin to both ‘hysteria’ and postpartum depression

he pretty much swoons, let’s be honest

henry clerval, a man who has been characterized as manly and heroic, has to chase after damsel-in-distress victor and care for him as he convalesces 

afterward, he hides what he did and went through, for fear that others will label him crazy and emotional and not believe him. sound familiar?

Victor in general is more emotional than the other characters and is constantly tempering his reactions to not be seen as irrational 

the book does not otherwise have central female characters 

Also, Shelley’s mother died in childbirth. It’s interesting, then, that Shelley presents the creation of life as something horrific and damaging. She parallels Victor with her mother.

“The sun is life.”

And you shall not see it.

Victor thinks so lowly of the Creature, that he deprives him of something as minuscule as the warmth of the sun.

And in trapping the Creature where the sun can’t reach him, Victor Frankenstein practically tells him right from the start that he does not deserve life, nor the simple pleasures of it.

The sun is life.

He thinks the creature has no life.

The final scene of the movie, the Creature is bathed in sunlight.

All she has given, all I have taken.

“The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. Perhaps, I thought, this was the way of the world.”