Frankenstein: On The Creature's Mate

I dunno I see a lot of fixation in Frankenstein analysis on sympathy and interest for the creature, and I guess my big secret is that I don’t find him terribly interesting/sympathetic and it isn’t even because of the murders and swearing revenge, it’s on his fixation that having a mate would make him happy.

Like even aside from the modern incel parallels, it’s just bizarre that this is his conclusion, and the fact is that Victor knows that the creature having a mate built for him will not make him happy. Like aside from Victor’s stated reasoning to not make the female creature, he knows exactly what this is like. His “mate” was selected for him by his creators at a very young age and he’s been avoiding marrying her this whole time. In fact he only agrees to marry his ‘mate’ when he believes the marriage will end in his death, which makes it essentially a suicide attempt. His family believes this marriage will fix his mental problems just like how the creature believes forcing Victor to make him a mate will fix his, but Victor knows neither of these things will happen because both of their problems are so much deeper than simple, forced companionship can fix, and would only be sentencing these women to a horrible fate.

But like, the creature cannot be reasoned with on this point. He has created his own binary choice of having this mate created for him or perpetual loneliness, when that is not the choice nature has provided. He even ends himself after Victor dies because his relationship with Victor was all he really had, but he never treated that relationship like it was worth having. And maybe it wasn’t, but could he have made the relationship with the female creature worth having? Did he even know how, would he even know how to invest into it? She was always just a possession to him and having her would not fix him, and would just create one more broken person. Why am I supposed to feel sympathy for someone swearing revenge over this? He decides to make Victor’s life a hell of loneliness like his own for his refusal to make a mate, but Victor did not take anything away from the creature for refusing to do so — we see no indication that the creature would be able to dig himself out of his hell of loneliness even if he did have his mate. He wasted his life throwing a tantrum over a mate he could not have even if she existed.

Originally posted on Tumblr on November 22, 2022 at brain-depositary