Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

of the overwhelming external ugliness. However, we do not “see” what
they see. There is a cognitive gap between what the characters perceive
and what Shelley describes to the reader.
A further complication with the above passage lies in what is
indicated by “unfashioned,” and “weak, and faulty.” While the creature
is “fashioned” into what he is (both internally and externally) by Dr.
Frankenstein, he is not fashioned in much detail by Shelley’s words. It is
left to our imaginations to supply the detail of what nightmarish form the
creature should take. What does this mean in relation to the Corpus data,
which suggests that there was less of an obsession with physical form,
pre-twentieth century (and the advent of cinema)? Perhaps Shelley’s
words could not do justice to the spectral form the creature took in her
imagination. The Corpus data validates this point in that nineteenth
century adjectives in general described internal characteristics. Despite
the Corpus, I am still greatly concerned by the lack of any physical body
in the novel. The “weak and faulty” nature that Frankenstein refers to is
not a reflection of his creation; he is alluding to himself. He realizes that
the physical body of his creation is vastly superior, but he was not able
to endow the creation with physical beauty. His grasp of science failed
to create a humanity that could be seen as such through humanity’s own
eyes.
The gap between the constructed body that Shelley doesn’t show us
and the complicated internal framework of the creature then is the point
of the passage: the horror of the creature is meant to reflect the horror
buried within our own unconscious—the weaknesses within ourselves,
which we repress. Derrida sees a similarity in language, arguing that:
[N]ature is affected—from without—by an overturning
which modifies it in its interior, denatures it and obliges it
to be separated from itself. Nature denaturing itself, being
separated from itself, naturally gathering its outside into its
104 | Allen
inside, is catastrophe, a natural event that overthrows nature, or
monstrosity, a natural deviation within nature. (33)
The monster in Shelley’s novel hides within not only the internal,
“psychological” being of the reader, but in the words themselves, because
of their lack of a referent. This is a gap within a gap, the monster within
the monster. Perhaps this explains the uncanny psychological grasp that
the novel seems to have on us, and the reason why we so strongly need to
express it in cinema: because the monster (with lack of a body) reaches out
from within the void of the text and demands us to supply it with a body
of meaning. Hollywood is happy to oblige. We become the close friends
that Victor Frankenstein needs to fashion the “weak and faulty” nature
of the text, which has become a gross and monstrous void of humanity.
When dealing with the monstrous, perception permeates myth. Jay
Clayton deconstructs the role of the monster in Frankenstein, likening him
to Medusa, claiming that the gaze of the monster is more troubling than
seeing him, for “[a]lthough the monster in Shelley’s novel is hideous to
look at, Frankenstein himself feels more keenly the horror of the creature
looking at him. In this respect, Shelley reverses the terms of monstrosity.”
I like Clayton’s allusion, but I do not see the same incongruity that he
sees. Shelley has not reversed the direction of the gaze. The monster
is hideous in that we cannot see him, but also in that he follows and
watches his creator, unseen. The Medusa myth plays on that same fear.
To look upon Medusa means certain death, yet she is free to look on her
victims with impunity. The monster, remember, cannot be seen; he is
hidden within the gaps of text and language, and therefore the horror
is compounded by the fact that he can see us. Clayton invokes another
work of Derrida’s, where he synthesizes his argument as a reaction to
“fac[ing] … the impossibility of describing the unnamable in positive
terms.” As Clayton notes:
[Derrida] chooses a significant figure to fill the void, that of a
Allen | 105