Untitled - California State University, Long Beach
Untitled - California State University, Long Beach
Untitled - California State University, Long Beach
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this “sublimity” in the male monster as encouraging his connection with<br />
Victor, while the female monster’s raw representation of “female sexuality”<br />
and the female body threatens Victor and drives him to destroy her. In<br />
this sense, Elizabeth is more clearly connected to the male monster. Her<br />
other-worldliness reflects the sublimity of the creature and forms a space<br />
of connection with Victor’s identity. In fact, Elizabeth’s incompatibility<br />
with the raw reality of death, of the gruesomely constructed body further<br />
disassociates her from the female monster who offers only that to the text.<br />
Thus establishing the connection between Elizabeth and the male<br />
monster, the third space occupied by each character can be further<br />
explicated in their identities’ relations to the symbolic and imaginary<br />
orders. Exploring this aspect of Elizabeth and the monster’s identities<br />
sheds light on their ultimate compatibility with reality and their ability to<br />
maintain a state of fluidity in the novel. Gigante argues that the ugliness<br />
of the creature is distinct from the Freudian concept of the uncanny.<br />
She states that “while something may be uncanny for one person and<br />
yet not so for another, the ugly is universally offensive” (567). Moreover,<br />
she claims that, in this way, the creature is “that aesthetic impossibility:<br />
the positive manifestation of ugliness” (567). In becoming such a<br />
manifestation, the creature is set apart by his ugliness in the same way<br />
that Elizabeth is set apart by her ethereality. While Halberstam argues<br />
that the creature’s ugliness traps him forever in the Lacanian imaginary 2<br />
order (44), Gigante contends that the true horror of ugliness is its threat<br />
to “consume and disorder the subject” (569). Both critics, therefore,<br />
argue for the monster’s embodiment of the imaginary that forever resists<br />
the symbolic. The creature’s resistance of the symbolic is paramount to<br />
the continuation of the fluid identity that the third space of his ugliness<br />
creates. Elizabeth can also be seen as resisting the symbolic order, which<br />
Gigante claims that Victor defines in his opening statement of his family<br />
history as a means of identifying himself (580). Elizabeth’s lack of clear<br />
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origins, the mystery that shrouds her parents’ identities, and her own<br />
unclear identification within the family structure points to her failure to<br />
be incorporated into the symbolic order. Elizabeth’s marriage to Victor,<br />
however, imposes a structure upon her identity. Incorporating her into<br />
the symbolic order by labeling her as Victor’s wife, Elizabeth’s ethereal<br />
nature is drawn into the social structure of a life/death binary with which<br />
her identity is ultimately incompatible.<br />
The connection between the identity of Elizabeth and that of the<br />
male monster can be seen most clearly in Victor’s dream as Elizabeth<br />
actually morphs into the monster. Victor’s vision of Elizabeth walking “in<br />
the bloom of health” transforms first into the corpse of his dead mother<br />
and then, upon his waking, into “the miserable monster” (61). The<br />
transformation that takes place in this sequence signifies the connection<br />
of Elizabeth and the monster, the fluidity of their identities, and their<br />
interchangeability.<br />
The intervening image of the dead mother, however, is important to<br />
note in the sequence. Julia Kristeva writes: “the abject, on the contrary<br />
… is what is radically excluded, drawing me towards the point where<br />
meaning collapses” (126). Kristeva’s concept of the abject is useful in<br />
understanding the identity of the monster, as well as the identity of<br />
Elizabeth in the text. The abject, according to Kristeva, repulses because<br />
it reminds us of the other. It is unrecognizable and opposed to the object,<br />
or the self (126). Abjection entails what is horrifying and repulsive:<br />
blood, vomit, corpses, puss, etc.—all of which the Frankenstein monster<br />
is clearly a prime example. The abject, primarily the corpse, collapses<br />
meaning in its jarring reminder of death, specifically our own death,<br />
and its breakdown of the self/other, subject/object distinction that<br />
is necessary for entrance into the Lacanian symbolic 3 order in which<br />
identity is secured in a socially-constructed form (Introductory Guide to<br />
Critical Theory n. pag.). The interjection of Caroline’s corpse into Victor’s<br />
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