30.12.2013 Views

Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

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 />

86 | Wills<br />

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 />

Wills | 87

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!