Queerness, Monstrosity, and Frankenstein
July 22, 2024 5:32 AM Subscribe
From C. E. McGill: "Both Victor and the monster die at the end of Frankenstein, fading tragically into the arctic sunset, but I couldn’t bear to do the same to Mary. Perhaps (despite my love of tragic queer horror), it would have felt in this case too close to burying my gays; perhaps I simply felt that, after all her hard work, Mary deserved more. Whatever the case, it felt right – like a love letter, almost, to myself and to all the other unnatural creatures out there – to give her a happy ending. In the words of Frankenstein, “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”"
This is an essay from the author of Our Hideous Progeny, one of the books I read last year that really stuck with me.
And: Happy Birthday, James Whale!
This is an essay from the author of Our Hideous Progeny, one of the books I read last year that really stuck with me.
And: Happy Birthday, James Whale!
it would have felt in this case too close to burying my gays
I think this is ... well, I haven't read the book, I don't know how it works in this particular book. But I stand firm on the belief that we must bury our gays, we must pile them high, we must fill the countryside with their bodies. We must have an entire continent of the dead. To do otherwise is to sort of cheat. If you have the monstrosity without the tragedy...then you don't really have the monstrosity, you haven't grappled with what it means, you haven't embraced the weirdness of being a monster. The monster who is simply misunderstood and then goes on to have a happy life is a character for children, a cartoon, a picture book. It's the ugly duckling. It doesn't allow us to reckon with the full panoply of monstrosity. Being pursued by torches and pitchforks changes you, and we should honor those changes.
But I am old and I come from a generation where discomfort and death were assumed to be the natural state of the queer experience. You grow up in the torture chamber, you finish in the pit. So there's a chance that a younger generation may not see why having a happy ending makes no sense thematically. But I would posit that if they don't understand it, it's because they weren't really monsters to begin with, and perhaps they should take a further step back and consider the monsters, before leaping in and identifying with them.
To put it another way, we have so commoditized and psychologized trauma that we have begun to pretend it is not foundational. When trauma serves as decor, you end up with Young Frankenstein, not Frankenstein. And there's an important difference there. Do you want to be a monster, or do you want to be on Spirit Halloween's spam email list?
posted by mittens at 10:27 AM on July 22 [3 favorites]
I think this is ... well, I haven't read the book, I don't know how it works in this particular book. But I stand firm on the belief that we must bury our gays, we must pile them high, we must fill the countryside with their bodies. We must have an entire continent of the dead. To do otherwise is to sort of cheat. If you have the monstrosity without the tragedy...then you don't really have the monstrosity, you haven't grappled with what it means, you haven't embraced the weirdness of being a monster. The monster who is simply misunderstood and then goes on to have a happy life is a character for children, a cartoon, a picture book. It's the ugly duckling. It doesn't allow us to reckon with the full panoply of monstrosity. Being pursued by torches and pitchforks changes you, and we should honor those changes.
But I am old and I come from a generation where discomfort and death were assumed to be the natural state of the queer experience. You grow up in the torture chamber, you finish in the pit. So there's a chance that a younger generation may not see why having a happy ending makes no sense thematically. But I would posit that if they don't understand it, it's because they weren't really monsters to begin with, and perhaps they should take a further step back and consider the monsters, before leaping in and identifying with them.
To put it another way, we have so commoditized and psychologized trauma that we have begun to pretend it is not foundational. When trauma serves as decor, you end up with Young Frankenstein, not Frankenstein. And there's an important difference there. Do you want to be a monster, or do you want to be on Spirit Halloween's spam email list?
posted by mittens at 10:27 AM on July 22 [3 favorites]
Mary Shelley's life was racked by tragic early deaths.
Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of childbed fever 10 days after Mary was born and
Not only all that, Mary Shelley herself was saved from bleeding to death after a miscarriage by being plunged into an ice bath at the instigation of her husband Percy Shelley, who was killed in a sailing mishap less than two weeks later.
To warp her great work toward a happy ending is a grotesque travesty.
posted by jamjam at 3:37 PM on July 22
Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of childbed fever 10 days after Mary was born and
Mary Shelley also lost 3 children at young ages:Another commenter in the linked thread quotes Mary as saying the recurring dream of the revived child inspired Frankenstein .
Of the death of her first child, Clara, Mary recounts a recurring dream in which she was able to resuscitate her baby: “Dreamt that my little baby came to life again – that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it by the fire & it lived – I awake & find no baby – I think about the little thing all day”.
Second child (William) lived to 3 and a half, then died after a short illness.
Third child died (Clara) after a short time.
Fourth child (Percy) lived, but she wrote of her difficulty in believing he would live after losing 3 children: “it is a bitter thought that all should be risked on one yet how much sweeter than to be childless as I was for 5 hateful months – Do not let us talk of those 5 months; when I think of all I suffered … I shudder with horror yet even now a sickening feeling steps in the way of every enjoyment when I think – of what I will not write about”.
Not only all that, Mary Shelley herself was saved from bleeding to death after a miscarriage by being plunged into an ice bath at the instigation of her husband Percy Shelley, who was killed in a sailing mishap less than two weeks later.
To warp her great work toward a happy ending is a grotesque travesty.
posted by jamjam at 3:37 PM on July 22
But it comes with a free Frogurt!
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:34 PM on July 22
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:34 PM on July 22
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