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and gender identity throughout Mary Shelley’s 19th century text
For any writer, the genesis of the Frankenstein novel is a story as notorious as that of the monster itself: Mary Shelley, locked indoors for days on end, agrees to a terrifying writing competition among her literary friends. By the end, she produces one of the greatest horror classics of all time.
But despite the widespread fame of Shelley’s signature monster in the two centuries since their conception, the novel itself has been endlessly re-interpreted by successive generations of readers. One of these emerging sets of new perspectives is that of queer literary and socio-political theory, which has been increasingly applied to this horror classic as queer scholastic inquiry itself expands and evolves.
On the surface, a queer interpretive lens appears to be an odd choice for Frankenstein; the novel does not overly concern itself with romantic or sexual themes, and its central conflict is between a man and a monster – the former the progenitor of the latter. But manifold interpretations of the text see notable, and intriguing, commentary on both gender and sexuality throughout the narrative – insights which might inform how we view these issues against our own modern struggle with technological and scientific innovation.
A Monster Is Born
The basic plot of Frankenstein reads as a classic cautionary tale: the brilliant young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, becomes obsessed with creating life following the untimely death of his mother. His frantic, all-consuming efforts result in the birth of a massive creature, constructed from reanimated human body parts, but terrifying in appearance. Frankenstein shuns “the Creature” and abandons his laboratory, only for his creation to slip away in his absence.
Frankenstein then receives word of his brother’s mysterious murder. Upon returning home, Frankenstein spots his Creature near the scene of the murder and deduces that the monster must have committed the crime. But when Frankenstein journeys into nearby mountains, he finds the Creature and is at last forced to face the product of his work.
The Creature relays the tale of their life journey thus far, replete with sorrow and antagonistic interactions with nearly every human they encountered – despite their efforts to assist and (in one case) even rescue those around them. The Creature then journeys to Frankenstein’s home, determined to find their creator and demand his help. The Creature’s tale ends with his confession of murdering Frankenstein’s brother, which incenses Frankenstein.
The Creature forces Frankenstein to agree to a compromise; if Frankenstein will create a female monster, a partner, then the pair will disappear into the wilderness for the remainder of their lives. In return, the Creature vows to never harm any of Frankenstein’s loved ones ever again. Frankenstein reluctantly agrees to the bargain, and begins work on a companion for his monster. But Frankenstein suffers a crisis of conscience as he fears the consequences of unleashing a second “evil” creature upon the world. He destroys his work, to the monster’s outage, and the Creature vows that they “will be with [Frankenstein] on his wedding night.”
Frankenstein, assuming that the creature will attack him the night after his wedding, arms himself and leaves his bride, Elizabeth, alone in their rooms to search for the monster himself. But he unwittingly falls into the Creature’s trap, and leaves his bride vulnerable. The monster strangles her, setting off a years-long pursuit in which Frankenstein hunts his monster out of burning revenge. Frankenstein ultimately dies on an Arctic-bound ship, and the Creature itself mourns its creator – proclaiming that his death brought no peace, and all they have ever known is misery.
Monsters Within, and Without
Undoubtedly, a novel as thematically intense and complex as that of Frankenstein can be interpreted in numerous ways and as allegory for a host of marginalized communities. But Frankenstein has been a particular subject of fascination, and inspiration, for queer literature and media writ large, especially as the queer community has seen its public visibility and political influence revolutionized over the last half-century. One commentator, Charlie Fox, opined in the New York Times that, “[w]hen you’re gay and grow up feeling like a hideous misfit…identifying with the Monster is hardly a stretch: A misunderstood beast finds solace in the solitude of the woods, but seems to endlessly face the wrath of the torch-bearing, small-minded inhabitants in the world beyond.”[1] He adds that a host of queer-inspired films and shows, including the cult-classic Rocky Horror Picture Show and Penny Dreadful, portray versions of the Creature through an explicitly queer lens.
considered by some literary analysts as one of the first “queer Gothic” novels
But what of Mary Shelley’s text itself? The foremost connective thread, that of the Creature’s experience of life, to that of many queer experiences is obvious. The monster is born “abnormal” through no fault of their own, but rather through the designs of a distant, wary “creator” that abandons them to a cruel world. Their most basic desires, namely for family and companionship, are treated with disdain and mockery by those around them. Many of these experiences are tragically all-too-familiar to queer individuals.
The Creature’s subsequent lashing out against mankind, and in particular their pursuit of recognition (then revenge) against their creator is treated as the actions of an inherently evil being – unrepentant, far beyond the realms of salvation. Victor Frankenstein, who narrates nearly all of Shelley’s tale, certainly sees “the fiend” through this harsh, good-and-evil lens – despite clear evidence that the Creature is deeply sensitive, with a powerful sense of moral right and wrong, but overwhelmed by a world where their very existence is an affront.
Other analyses go considerably further into the text and see queer allegory not just in the Creature’s experience of life, but in the broader world around them. Some analysts argue that Frankenstein represents one of the “queer Gothic” texts of the 19th century, or “texts [which] allow readers to experience certain anxieties, resistances and transgressive pleasures in relation to sexual norms.”[2] These norms reflect both individuals as well as collective social units – particularly the family.
Mair Rigby notes, for example, that “[the Creature’s] intrusion certainly disturbs the peaceful normality of family representation in the novel.” This is true in both how the Creature interacts with a rural family they discover during their independent sojourn, as well as the Frankenstein family which they ultimately destroy. In both cases, the Monster is brutally excluded from ideal “normal” families, and so sets about destroying them. The notion of an “abnormal” interloper wrecking a seemingly happy, heteronormative family (both of which may not be all they appear) fits into the broader idea of the Creature as a representation of a queer experiences of forced exclusion. The monster’s very presence upends default, assumed family structures.
are tragically all too common in queer experiences
From Queer to Gay Allegory?
Further allegory could be found in the novel’s central relationship – that of Frankenstein to his creation. Both the Creature and the creator assume (in line with the cultural norms of the period setting) that marriage to presumably “female” partners (Frankenstein to Elizabeth, the Creature to a female companion) will soothe the deep internal distress that wrecks them both. But despite this, both seem only preoccupied with each other – even pursuing each other to the literal ends of the earth. Rigby views Frankenstein as a male character who “invest[s] marriage with a tremendous and apparently all-solving power of containment, a power which becomes embodied, for them, by the women who offer acceptable alternatives to their dangerous relationships with the monsters.”
Numerous scholars have pointed to the homosexual, and perhaps homoerotic, undertones in the text itself – from the immersive, self-hatred and fascination of Victor Frankenstein throughout the monster’s creation, to his obsession with the creature later on and determination that their “relationship” to each other never be truly revealed – lest it destroy Frankenstein’s reputation.[3]
homoerotic and obsessive undertones in the original Frankenstein text
Throughout the story, Frankenstein repeatedly professes to be repulsed by the monster, to despise and reject his creation – but even so, he finds himself irresistibly drawn back to the Creature. Indeed, Frankenstein’s efforts to seek the monster out result in the conveyance of the monster’s narrative as a central element of the story – even eliciting Frankenstein’s sympathy and pity (if only briefly). So too the monster – far from being delighted at the vanquishment of his creator at the end of the novel, the Creature mourns his creator and laments his absolute hopelessness in this world. In this sense, the death of Frankenstein destroys any motivation, any raison d’être, for the monster. All of this could be interpreted as indicative of suppressed homosexual and/or homoromantic connection – desire and forced emotional intimacy which devolves into rancor and bitterness and destroys both of their lives.
Gender Identity in Frankenstein
But the Frankenstein story is not just intriguing in its possible commentary on queer sexuality, but also its insights on gender and the defiance of cisnormativity. For although Shelley’s text appears to indicate the Creature’s physical appearance as masculine, the text also raises questions as to their gender identity (or perhaps lack thereof). Frankenstein, for his part, refuses to name his creation, and perpetually refers to it by genderless pejoratives like “creature” “monster” “fiend” and worse. In a more figurative sense, the monster’s sense of alienation and disassociation from their own body, and their desperation to be accepted for who they truly are and not misunderstood for their appearance could speak to the transgender and nonbinary experiences.
Jolene Zigarovich, for example, notes “the persistent critical difficulty in describing not only Frankenstein’s creature but also his ‘monstrous’ gender” and emphasizes “the powerful role the monster plays in trans narratives and theory.”[4] This aspect of the novel has had been deployed in both negative, and positive, ways for trans and nonbinary communities. Anson Koch-Rein discusses how “Shelley’s nameless creature has been used to denounce transgender people as ‘synthetic products’ of a ‘medical empire’”.[5] But Koch-Rein adds that trans-affirmative voices “use his rage-fueled agency to carve out a transgender speaking position in the face of the silencing gestures of transphobia.”[6]
Susan Stryker’s essay “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix” is a famous example of the latter.[7] The essay is framed as the Creature’s own words, speaking of and through the transgender experience, and channeling the monster’s disgust and disillusionment with the world around them. The essay has strong autobiographical elements, and has been praised as a giving new voice to the Creature wherein they demand identity and recognition on their own terms.
Of Monsters and Men
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been hailed as one of the first science-fiction novels in history, but the abundance of queer sexuality and gender commentaries sprung from the seemingly straightforward plot suggest that its narrative represents far more than a science experiment gone wrong. In the two-hundred years since Frankenstein’s publication, scores of queer voices have reassessed Shelley’s original work and found pieces of their own stories cobbled therein, perhaps not unlike the creation of the monster itself.
But what is perhaps most fascinating about the growing volume of queer scholarship on this story is how much of it questions the “monster” narrative itself. In many of these interpretations, the Creature is increasingly cast as the hero (or perhaps anti-hero) and their persecutors as the villains. Queer interpretations have thus turned the tables, making the Creature (not Frankenstein) the central character of the narrative and its propulsive figure. As in the novel itself, the “monster”, it seems, gets the last word after all.
[1] Charlie Fox, “Why Frankenstein’s Monster Haunts Queer Art”, The New York Times, October 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/t-magazine/art/frankenstein-monster-queer-art.html.
[2] Mair Rigby, “Monstrous Desire: Frankenstein and the Queer Gothic”, 2006, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjkvpuB3dP6AhXoQzABHfYgDR8QFnoECCYQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Forca.cardiff.ac.uk%2F56070%2F1%2FU584824.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3yJgyB5Qv0xTa6MBSHYkvr.
[3] Michael Eberle-Sinatra, “Readings of Homosexuality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Four Film Adaptations”, Université de Montréal, https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAMQw7AJahcKEwjY6p_B7dP6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpapyrus.bib.umontreal.ca%2Fxmlui%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F1866%2F13519%2Fhomosexuality-frankenstein_Sinatra-ROC.pdf%3Fsequence%3D3%26isAllowed%3Dy&psig=AOvVaw29t5SoK9YB-Yr3ewx2W_Jm&ust=1665424806581924.
[4] Jolene Zigarovich. “The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein.” Science Fiction Studies 45, no. 2 (2018): 260–72. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.45.2.0260.
[5] Anson Koch-Rein (2019) “Trans-lating the Monster: Transgender Affect and Frankenstein,” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 30:1, 44-61, DOI: 10.1080/10436928.2019.1560878.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Available here: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GzZwEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT95&dq=frankenstein+and+queer+gender+interpretation&ots=uwiMUTOcbx&sig=bnx6Ygmwzc0XaGA5zUpwzUeKx4A#v=onepage&q=frankenstein%20and%20queer%20gender%20interpretation&f=false