Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

“I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for
realities of little worth,” laments Victor Frankenstein when the reality
of modern science has seemed to annihilate his dreams of pursuing
“immortality” and “power” (52). Viewed through the lens of Feminist
theory, Victor’s words express the struggle to attain a fluid identity
within a reality bound by binaries. Referring specifically to the idea
of “becoming” presented in Helene Cixous’ 1 essay, “The Laugh of the
Medusa,” a fluid identity is not structured or restricted by binaries or
social constructs. Rather, identity changes, encompasses, adapts, and
reforms. Such “boundless grandeur” can not be achieved within an
existing framework and must, therefore, be created in a separate space. In
the text of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this “third space” outside of the
binary system is created by Elizabeth’s other-worldliness, the creature’s
ugliness, and the two characters’ mutual monstrosity. Both Elizabeth
and the monster in this way resist signification in the Lacanian symbolic
order. While Elizabeth’s fluid identity ultimately becomes problematic
when confronted with the reality of a life/death binary, the creature’s
identity, occupying the space of ugliness and death, is able to maintain a
state of “boundless grandeur.”
The concept of a “third space” is prevalent in post-colonial discourse.
Arguing in terms of political hybridity, Homi K. Bhabha writes of
“elements that are neither the One (unitary working class) nor the Other
(the politics of gender) but something else besides which contests the terms
Wills | 79