Domesticity, the wall which separates the “female” domestic space of the novel from the “male” public sphere, is invoked by Mary Shelley not, as some critics suggest, as a utopian solution to the (presumably male) problems of the world, but rather as an articulation of the disastrous results of defining the domestic and extrafamilial spheres as mutually exclusive. Victor Frankenstein’s narrative begins with a genealogy. Clearly, Shelley is indicating that questions of family and lineage are to figure importantly in his tale, but the genesis of the Frankenstein family is an unusual one. Victor’s father, Alphonse, sees his bride for the first time kneeling by her father’s coffin “weeping bitterly” (18). Alphonse takes Caroline under his wing and cares for her as if she were his child, coming “like a protecting spirit to the girl, who committed herself to his care” (18). More a father than husband, Alphonse shelters Caroline “as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener from every rougher wind” (19). Caroline is portrayed as a plant capable of surviving only under the careful cultivation of her surrogate caretaker (18). More significant, however, than Shelley’s caricature of a weak, submissive wife is her choice to have Alphonse “gradually relinquish all his public functions” in order to become “the husband and father of a family” (17). Domesticity is
incompatible with the “affairs of his country” and “public business” which previously dominated Alphonse’s existence (17). The family unit created by the marriage of the elder Frankensteins and reaffirmed by the birth of Victor cannot coexist with the world of politics and public affairs. Private life completely precludes the possibility of public life for Alphonse Frankenstein. Alphonse’s political ambitions are incompatible with the role of husband and father. This completely gendered dichotomy creates a tension in the novel between the family and the “outside world” −a world of exploration adventure, politics, public affairs, academia, and intellectualism−to which women like Victor’s wife and mother, confined in their domestic roles, have no access.
Domesticity, the wall which separates the “female” domestic space of the novel from the “male” public sphere, is invoked by Mary Shelley not, as some critics suggest, as a utopian solution to the (presumably male) problems of the world, but rather as an articulation of the disastrous results of defining the domestic and extrafamilial spheres as mutually exclusive. Victor Frankenstein’s narrative begins with a genealogy. Clearly, Shelley is indicating that questions of family and lineage are to figure importantly in his tale, but the genesis of the Frankenstein family is an unusual one. Victor’s father, Alphonse, sees his bride for the first time kneeling by her father’s coffin “weeping bitterly” (18). Alphonse takes Caroline under his wing and cares for her as if she were his child, coming “like a protecting spirit to the girl, who committed herself to his care” (18). More a father than husband, Alphonse shelters Caroline “as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener from every rougher wind” (19). Caroline is portrayed as a plant capable of surviving only under the careful cultivation of her surrogate caretaker (18). More significant, however, than Shelley’s caricature of a weak, submissive wife is her choice to have Alphonse “gradually relinquish all his public functions” in order to become “the husband and father of a family” (17). Domesticity is
incompatible with the “affairs of his country” and “public business” which previously dominated Alphonse’s existence (17). The family unit created by the marriage of the elder Frankensteins and reaffirmed by the birth of Victor cannot coexist with the world of politics and public affairs. Private life completely precludes the possibility of public life for Alphonse Frankenstein. Alphonse’s political ambitions are incompatible with the role of husband and father. This completely gendered dichotomy creates a tension in the novel between the family and the “outside world” −a world of exploration adventure, politics, public affairs, academia, and intellectualism−to which women like Victor’s wife and mother, confined in their domestic roles, have no access.
In Frankenstein, Shelley overtly links death and romantic love, death and procreation, and death and the erotic. Beyond the obvious textual links between sexuality and death, the structure and plotting of the narrative itself parallels the link between the death drive and the libidinal drive in Sigmund Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” If Frankenstein is read as an allegory of male usurpation of the female reproductive space, or as Schoene-Harwood puts it, “womb envy,” then the child whom Victor fathers, composed as he is of various body parts stolen from human corpses, is a symbol of death itself being brought to life (15). Victor describes the abnormal procreative act which produces the monster in terms of passionate desire, saying “I had desired it with an arduor that far exceeded moderation” (42). The erotic overtones of the language used to describe Victor’s passionate pursuit of creation and the language of homosocial desire noted in the previous discussion of the gaze make it clear that the monster is an object of simultaneous desire and revulsion. Even though he is not the product of a “normal” sexual union between a man and woman, the monster’s creation has sexual overtones. Furthermore, in the body of the monster, sexuality and death are inextricably linked. The monster’s murderous acts themselves have a certain sexual charge. When the monster kills William, his urge to “seize him” is a violent impulse based nonetheless on a desire to connect with another living being (122). After he kills William, the monster’s attention is drawn to the miniature portrait of Caroline Beaufort around the child’s neck:
“In spite of my malignity it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine
benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright” (122).
Desire for the woman in the portrait is transformed into rage as he reflects on his own sexual deprivation and imagines the rejection that would result if she were to return his gaze. Looking for a hiding place, the monster encounters Justine Moritz sleeping in a barn. His rage is awakened, once more by imagining the gaze of a woman. Anticipating her reaction “if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld [him]” the same rage that filled him at the thought of Caroline Beaufort “regarding [him]” overtakes the monster once again (122-3). The monster leans over Justine in a seductive posture, whispering in her ear “Awake, fairest, thy lover is near−he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved awake!” (123). This sexual play-acting demonstrates once again that the gaze is a function of desire. He decides to hunt down his creator and demand that Victor create a being that “would not deny herself to [him]” (123). The monster states that he is “consumed by a burning passion which [Victor] alone can gratify” (122). The catalyst for this burning passion, described in unmistakably erotic language, is the murder of the child William, and the transformation that, in the monster’s own words, occurs “as I fixed my eyes on the child” (122). Gazing at the portrait of the beautiful Caroline Beaufort, the monster revises his account of why he murdered William−not “to silence him” or to exact “eternal revenge,” but because he was “deprived the delights” of erotic love (122). The monster clearly associates his violent, murderous acts with sexual deprivation. Pretending to be Justine’s lover as he plots to frame her for murder and knowing that under “the sanguinary laws of man” she will almost certainly die, the monster experiences “a thrill of terror” akin to sexual excitement (123)