Frankenstein's Other: Ugliness is in the Eye of the Beholder
Many researchers and academics have reasoned that the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been exiled from society due to opinions on race, class, and gender during the early nineteenth century. Writers such as H.L. Malchow compare Shelley’s description of the creature to stereotypes of black slaves: large, ape-like, cannibalistic, and sexually threatening. In other words, the creature was feared by the people in Frankenstein because of his physical and character differences. As the creature made his way out in the world, he was rejected by the townspeople solely based on the variance in his appearance from their’s. And even after he educated himself through observation while at the De Lacey’s, they still refused him because he did not look exactly human. The underlying reason for discrimination against the creature goes back to what people value in others and themselves through the lenses of beauty and standards. According to author Lars Lunsford, Victor Frankenstein values himself above all else.
Lunsford writes in “The Devaluing of Life in Shelley’s Frankenstein,” that Victor Frankenstein caused the destruction that occurs in the novel due to his concern for personal reputation as opposed to the life and importance of others and other things. He claims that “Perhaps if Victor had valued the life he created—and helped the monster at this critical moment —he would have prevented most (if not all) of the devastation that follows” by arguing “that it is Dr. Frankenstein’s devaluing of life for the sake of social standing that leads to his downfall as both a creator and a person, and leads to the monster wreaking havoc throughout the novel” (pp. 174-175). In other words, Lunsford blames and places the consequences of the deaths on Victor. Victor has no worry or concern for the creature’s well-being; he doesn’t even give the creature a chance at the moment of his birth. According to Lunsford, all Victor Frankenstein truly cares about is his reputation in social and academic standings. He wants to be known “as the (in)famous father of reanimating dead flesh” (p.175). His short-comings as a carer is the reason he loses everything that he might actually value.
Because Victor has no value for pretty much anything but his career and reputation, he does not consider the creature’s well-being. Victor is too concerned with his want to be this renowned scientist who brought life to human remnants that he didn’t acknowledge what would happen if the creature did come to life. And if/when the creature became animated, Victor needed a plan on what to do next. All he did was run. He didn’t have a plan for how the creature would be a part of society (if at all), how people would react to him, and how the creature feels about his appearance. The potential beauty that could have been this creation was of no concern of the mad scientist. In Victor’s defense, he didn’t just put together random human and animals scraps into a form. He did create something proportionate biologically correct. He even refers to the creature’s “selected features as beautiful” (Shelley p.83). Victor describes the creature’s “yellowy skin” covering his crafted interior, his “lustrous black” hair, and “teeth of pearly whiteness” as pleasing, but was ruined by the “watery eyes” (p.83). The eyes appear to be “almost of the same colour as dun white sockets in which they were set” (p.83). It, along with “his shriveled complexion, and straight black lips” harshly contrast the beautiful features that could have made the creature a success in Victor’s eyes. For in the first seconds Victor met the live creature, “breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart (p.84). There was care and effort put into constructing the creature, but not for the creature’s sake. It was for Victor’s sake, or more specifically, Victor’s reputation’s sake. And when his creation disappointed him, he was distraught and abandoned it. He left his creation to fend for itself, in a world that would not be prepared for his coming out. Victor showed no pity or compassion for the newfound life of his creature, but rather thought of himself and ran.
He never did think about how the assembly of the creature would be so negatively perceived in society. When the creature encounters the townspeople, they react by fainting, throwing stones, and screaming in horror (Shelley p.124). They run away in fear and disgust. The same sort of situation happened when the creature introduced himself to the De Lacy family. Felix beat him, Agatha fainted, and Safie ran away in her confusion (p.148). Both of these reactions were caused by snap judgements solely based on the creature’s stature and appearance. The creature was unable to explain or defend himself, so he ran. He was exiled from the village, so he escaped to the wild woods, and discovered the De Lacey land. And then he eventually became excommunicated by that family. It’s not shocking that in a culture that valued beauty over most other qualities is to judge something so irregular. Nancy Fredricks says in “On the Sublime and Beautiful in Shelley’s Frankenstein,” towards the beginning of her argument “society’s valorization of the beautiful is responsible for the monster’s abandonment and abusive treatment, fueling his bitterness and murderous rage” (p.178). She discusses how when the creature encounters the De Lacey’s, he is judged by Felix and not his blind father. This is where Shelley conveys the value of impressions placed on physicality over intellect and personality. Lunsford and Fredricks both argue that values of life in Frankenstein that support beauty and reputation over all else are consequently why the creature becomes “othered.” The townspeople in Frankenstein feared and ran the creature out of the village because he was not what they thought of as beautiful and that he was too different.
Hannah O’Connor in “Queering the Mainstream Monster,” she argues that within gothic novels, creatures or monsters are feared and mistreated because of “visual signifiers of difference and abject appearance” (p.1). She combines queer theory and postcolonial views because she believes “queer postcolonial[ism]” is yet to be researched and understood (O’Connor 1). She goes further to discuss that the differences in skin and other features that are irregular are a catalyst for fear and anxiety. People recognize that a monster’s features are similar to their’s but not exact, so that confuses and scares them. This also has strong similarities to how racial stereotypes appear through Frankenstein. H.L. Malchow compares the social treatment of Frankenstein’s creature to that of stereotyped black slaves. Much like stereotypes of black slaves, the creature is seen as a large, gigantic ape-man like is cannibalistic and a sexual threat. Malchow shares how “The Negro, it was said, had more brute strength than the white man” (p.5). He goes claims that the creature is in fact no “ape-man” but that he has been judged incorrectly by the people in Frankenstein. The creature is not, in those moments, one of savage and animalistic quality. Malchow brings to light a few of Mungo Park’s findings and the writings of John Leyden to show how many white people saw acts done by those of color to be full of revenge and hate. Malchow himself says, “This combination of vengefulness and affection was in fact a stereotype commonly applied to any savage or primitive race” (p.7). He goes on to say that despite these ideas, all people seek affection and joy. Within Shelley’s text, it is apparent that those who outcast the creature are guilty of stereotyping him because of he is physically different than them.
His skin is rough O’Connor claims, “The hybrid identity poses a complete breakdown between the self and other, suggesting the erosion of established boundaries dictating difference” (p.4). In other words, the concept that the creature is neither fully human nor monster confuses people which then ensues fear. The main connection to Frankenstein O’Connor makes is that because of the lack of “heteronormative process of procreation results in the creation of the queer monster, which is unable to adhere to the social and moral conventions of society” (p.5). In other words, the creature is outcasted from day one because his birth process is out of the “norm” for their society. Not being a part of the normal also means that it is either extremely difficult or impossible for those who are normal to understand what the “others” go through. Thomas H. Schmid says “such experiences can never be adequately communicated to ‘normal’ members of society, to those who have not been similarly exposed to the ‘dark truth’; the real horror is to be alone in the knowledge of that truth” (Schmid pp. 19-20). The creature, after being mistreated multiple times, knew the truth of his nature.
After viewing himself on the pool, the creature realizes just how terrifying he is. He recognizes that he “in reality the monster” he is (Shelley 130). He is stuck in what Schmid called “terminal uniqueness,” a place of “isolation and ‘personal exceptionalism’ that is both incommunicable to others and incapable of being heard by [the] ’normal’” (Schmid p.20). He claims that the opposite of this isolation is found in “community and healing” where feelings can be shared (p.24). And yet even when community is found with others who feel unique and alone, there is still separation and a sense of competition. There is a debate on who was “more abject, more miserable, more alone,” just like between Victor and the creature (p. 26). One can grow so used to the feeling of lonely independence that anyone who challenges their experience is sure to here a refutation. That is why when the creature relays his struggles, Victor responds without sympathy. He believes that his own battle with uniqueness is worse. Neither one is worse than the other; they both experience “terminal uniqueness” in their own ways. The creature tries to change that when he begs Victor to make him a mate so that he will no longer be the only one of his kind; a female creation will be there to experience to loneliness with him. In other words, the creature wants someone who will understand what it is like to be treated with fear and disgust from a judgement made by a glance.
Ugly is word that can interpreted many ways in many contexts; there is no one right definition for what “ugly” is. Denise Gigante focuses in on a couple perspectives to help clarify want “ugly” may be within Shelley’s Frankenstein. Edmund Burke describes ugliness as “an excess of existence” rather than a typical lack there of and the creature is “only too
real” (Gigante p.566). He uses examples such as the creature’s dun, yellow eyes and rough skin to compare to Elizabeth to show just how displeasing the creature’s appearance is in light of Elizabeth’s clear, blue eyes and smooth skin. He believes Victor’s description of the creature’s skin to be “metonymic for his ugliness in general” (p.573). Burke’s view on ugliness is more focused on what is perceived as ugly. Immanuel Kant creates an argument that finds where ugliness comes from. He disagrees with the idea the evil and sin have a connection to ugliness (p.576). However, within Shelley’s novel, most (if not all) characters believe that to be true. Victor himself refers to the creature as “daemon” before the creature’s intellect is made known. Many of the books on Shelley’s reading list believed in this concept of evil and ugliness being connected, such as Paradise Lost or Pamela or Prometheus Unbound. Shelley, while maybe not in full agreement with these ideas, used them to indirectly impose empathy onto the creature. Knowing the emotional and psychological inner workings of the creature, we know he is not inherently evil. But because the society he surrounds himself with believes that and makes it known to him how detestable he is, he buys into the same beliefs himself.
Kant disagrees with these ideas of evil and ugly being entangled. He claims “we can distill the good from the ideal of beauty, there is no aesthetic idea of ugly from which to distill evil or anything else” (Gigante p.577). He references the same textual moments of Victor’s abandonment and his first appearance to the public in arguing that these reactions to ugly were “immediate” (p.578). Gigante sums up Kant’s reasoning behind the creature’s outcasting by claiming.
The soul shrinks back form the lack of harmony it finds threatening to its own coherence; what it cannot comprehend it rejects. The Creature is alienated from everyone he confronts precisely because his ugliness prevents those he meets from seeing past his ‘real existence’ to the greater sum of his being...” (p.579)
In other words, Kant believes that people will not give the creature a chance to explain himself or share his intellect because of his physicality. Then this article goes full circle in this conversation by referring to De Lacey and his blindness once more. Since De Lacey could not see, he could not judge his outlook, only his person.
Ugliness is what is not a typical beauty standard. That doesn’t mean that aspects that challenge beauty standards are indeed ugly, but that is how society views them to be. In the creature’s situation, his large stature and dun white eyes were irregular and different, therefore seen as ugly. He is devalued, oppressed, shunned, and even beaten because he is different.
There is nothing wrong with different. It is the fear of the unknown and foreign that causes people to cast such unfair judgments. Why do people react so negatively towards difference? Nothing would be special or glorified if everything and everyone were the same. Uniformity may seem efficient and appear equal, but universal conformity is a thing that can never reign supreme. Difference is what causes growth and success in societies, in economies, in cultures, etc. The creature may have came as a shock to the public, but they should not have been afraid of him. The only reason he turned into murderous and savage “daemon” was because the treatment he received forced him into believing that he was evil. His mind is completely malleable into believing whatever he comes across first. Maybe if people gave him a chance and were not so quick to hate and scorn at him, lives would have been saved and he would have never fallen into vengeance.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Rachel Harris for helping me make it through all my problems with citations, finding sources, and helping my paper be better executed. She answered all of my annoying texts with questions in rather quick time and made sure I understood what she would tell me. My simple question would be followed with an elaborate answer as well as writing suggestions and motivation to keep pressing on. She never let me fail. Another person I would to thank is my high school British Literature teacher for advising me on ways to take an argument and create my own through it. Bringing my own voice into the conversation seemed rather difficult because I felt that my sources brought to light the points that I would’ve made. She made me realize that I needed to agree/disagree and impose my interpretation of that.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful. edited by James T. Boulton, University of Notre Dame Press, 1958. Gigante, Denise. Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein. ELH, Vol. 67, no. 2, 2000, pp.566, 573.
Fredricks, Nancy. “On the Sublime and Beautiful in Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Essays in Literature, Vol. 23 Issue 2, 1996, pp. 179-189. Proquest Central, http:// search.proquest.com/docview/232608393?accountid=2202.
Gigante, Denise. Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein. ELH, Vol. 67, no. 2, 2000, pp. 565-587. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30031925.pdf?refreqid=excelsior %3A574a5e5fdd25cc3c549524f99e2546a2.
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. translated by James Creed Meredith, Claredon Press, 1952. Gigante, Denise. Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein. ELH, Vol. 67, no. 2, 2000, pp.577
Lunsford, Lars. “The Devaluing of Life in Shelley’s Frankenstein.” The Explicator, Vol. 68, issue 3, 2010, pp. 174-176. Proquest, http://search.proquest.com/docview/664988716? accountid=2202
Malchow, H.L. “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Frankenstein: Online Theory and Criticism, edited by Laura Buzzard and Nora Ruddock, Broadview Press, 1993, http://sites.broadviewpress.com/frankenstein/files/2015/08/ OCE-3-Malchow.pdf.
O’Connor, Hannah. “Queering the Mainstream Monster: Demonstrating Difference and Deviant Sexuality in Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Stoker’s Dracula (1897).” Frankenstein: Online Theory and Criticism, edited by Laura Buzzard and Nora Ruddock, Broadview Press, 2014, pp. 1-10, http://sites.broadviewpress.com/frankenstein/files/2015/08/OCE-3- OConnor.pdf.
Schimd, Thomas H. “Addiction and Isolation in Frankenstein: A Case of Terminal Uniqueness.” Gothic Studies, Vol. 11, issue 2, Manchester University Press, 2009, pp. 19-29. EBSCO Host, http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=52ec94c2-dd1b-40a8- a1b1-f3115d5c6004%40sessionmgr103&vid=9&hid=115.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. edited by D.L. MacDonald & Kathleen Scherf, 3rd edition, Broadview Press, 2012, 47-221.