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Untitled - California State University, Long Beach

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“I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for<br />

realities of little worth,” laments Victor Frankenstein when the reality<br />

of modern science has seemed to annihilate his dreams of pursuing<br />

“immortality” and “power” (52). Viewed through the lens of Feminist<br />

theory, Victor’s words express the struggle to attain a fluid identity<br />

within a reality bound by binaries. Referring specifically to the idea<br />

of “becoming” presented in Helene Cixous’ 1 essay, “The Laugh of the<br />

Medusa,” a fluid identity is not structured or restricted by binaries or<br />

social constructs. Rather, identity changes, encompasses, adapts, and<br />

reforms. Such “boundless grandeur” can not be achieved within an<br />

existing framework and must, therefore, be created in a separate space. In<br />

the text of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this “third space” outside of the<br />

binary system is created by Elizabeth’s other-worldliness, the creature’s<br />

ugliness, and the two characters’ mutual monstrosity. Both Elizabeth<br />

and the monster in this way resist signification in the Lacanian symbolic<br />

order. While Elizabeth’s fluid identity ultimately becomes problematic<br />

when confronted with the reality of a life/death binary, the creature’s<br />

identity, occupying the space of ugliness and death, is able to maintain a<br />

state of “boundless grandeur.”<br />

The concept of a “third space” is prevalent in post-colonial discourse.<br />

Arguing in terms of political hybridity, Homi K. Bhabha writes of<br />

“elements that are neither the One (unitary working class) nor the Other<br />

(the politics of gender) but something else besides which contests the terms<br />

Wills | 79

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