On Tuesday, we had an interesting discussion about the importance of beauty and how it most likely plays a part in Victor’s rejection of The Creature. With that conversation in mind, I wanted to explore the instances in the novel that beauty is impressed upon and use Six and Thompson’s From Hideous to Hedonist to further exemplify instances of interior/exterior monstrosity.
When Victor first constructs The Creature he takes time to describe how great of a job he did to make The Creature aesthetically pleasing by selecting the most beautiful parts from the graves and charnel houses, “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness…” (58).
This satisfaction does not last long, though, as Victor immediately points out, “…these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes…I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (58- 59). Once he comes to the realization that The Creature is not as beautiful as he intended him to be, he is immediately disenfranchised with his creation that he admittedly spent years on, deprived from any real semblance of human life.
Victor’s fascination with beauty isn’t just a random tidbit about himself though, it can actually be traced back to his childhood and his parents’ interactions with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is said to be one of the most important people in Victor’s life. She was welcomed into the family by Victor’s mom, “When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub- a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills… it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection.” (33). Two things in this interaction stand out to me: 1) since Victor is narrating he is putting this importance on Elizabeth’s beauty and making the connection that she deserves a better life simply because she’s beautiful and 2) On a macro level, Victor is implying (perhaps even plainly stating) that those who are more aesthetically pleasing deserve better and thus those who are not deserve to be shunned.
Six and Thompson’s From Hideous to Hedonist explores monstrosity and the idea of an internal/external monster. In the Frankenstein section, the authors highlight a very important conversation of aestheticism and morality. To summarize, they analyze how The Creature’s physical appearance attributed to his monstrous acts, “physical monstrosity is the indirect cause of moral monstrosity”. They go on further to explain that The Creature’s actions are really just a byproduct from all of the poor treatment he has received from those who were intolerant. Percy Bysshe Shelley stresses this point by stating, “Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked” in his essay On Frankenstein which goes further in depth about the story.
Overall, beauty and aesthetics play a huge role in this story. From Victor’s obsession and almost requirement of beauty to The Creature making his actions mirror his looks because of everyone’s impressions of him.
