Untitled - California State University, Long Beach
Untitled - California State University, Long Beach
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