Last Thursday, my group and I talked a lot about Victor’s more subconscious meaning for making the creature. Albeit we were all stumped by the fact that throughout the process of Victor’s engineering he knew exactly step by step what the creature was becoming and how it was being formed, and yet when it is finally finished, Victor detests it. Jessie, Sonia, Keona and I explored his reasonings of his hatred for the creation that he made, and how even though he had the power to change it, he never did. Jessie brought up that Frankenstein was actually his fiancee’s favorite book, and that she had an interesting theory about Victor and his creature. He talked about how the theory was that Victor was actually gay and had intense internalized homophobia, therefore his intentions of making the creation. The theory of hers is that in making the creation, Victor wanted a partner, but the internalized homophobia was what subconsciously motivated Victor to make it ‘hideous.’ In doing so, Victor could feel disgusted by the male gaze and gender, therefore strengthening his homophobia. It was backed up by the fact that Victor also was never seemingly in love with Elizabeth, and even didn’t really mourn after her death. Although none of this has ever been confirmed by Mary Shelley or blatantly expressed in the book, it does pose an interesting viewpoint of Victor’s possible true intentions, and therefore has a lot to explore when reading the book.
