Well, the good news is that, in the third section of our #TraLaFrankenstein readalong, the creature doesn’t turn to evil as a result of being in love with Agatha and her spurning him. The bad news is, he basically turns to evil because Agatha (and Safie and Boy De Lacey whose name I can’t be bothered to remember) spurn him. GREAT.
The creature continues telling his tale of woe to Frankenstein, a very unsympathetic audience. It’s all about how he reads Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives and The Sorrows of Young Werther and learns — doesn’t seem like much of anything? I guess his main takeaway is that it’s not good for a man/creature to be alone, but he def did not take in how to do proper morality, else he wouldn’t go on to kill little William, even if little William was being a real jerk at the time.
His plan, after finishing his reading material (and boy, the editor of the annotated edition is having none of the bullshit method by which he learned to read — every time he talks about reading, she’s got a footnote to be like “of course he couldn’t have learned to read that way in real life, this is stupid”), is that he’ll go to the De Laceys house when Safie and Agatha and Boy De Lacey (I want to say Frederick???) are out, and he’ll befriend old blind Papa De Lacey, who won’t be prejudiced by his appearance. Then once he and Papa De Lacey are firm friends, he’ll let the old guy convince the Lil De Laceys not to murder him on sight.
The creature plans this for months, even though it’s like, not an incredibly complex plan, like you could actually make that plan one day and put it into action the next day because it’s really quite basic. But anyway, he plans it for months, only for it to be screwed up by the Lil De Laceys coming home early. The girls faint and Boy De Lacey hits the creature with a stick, so he runs away to the mountains in despair of ever making a friend.
Okay, I’ve been a little snarky about the creature thus far, and if you don’t know this next bit, it’s going to seem like I’ve been a dick for no reason. But the thing is that what the creature concludes from all this violence and hatred — which I admit is sad and hard! — is that he needs Frankenstein to make him a lady creature to bang. And I tell you what, not even a whole month after that attack in Toronto,1 but also, always, I have very little patience for the argument “I wouldn’t do murders if somebody would just bang me.”
Update: I now hate everyone in this book.
Okay, so the creature resolves to go find Frankenstein in Geneva (there’s a reason he knows that’s where Frankenstein’s from but it’s too boring to go into), and he gets to Geneva with only a few more occurrences of people being hateful and violent to him. There he encounters William, who calls him an ogre and says My father, M. Frankenstein, will get you! So, of course, he kills him. To be fair, William seems like he sucked. It remains, however, hella unfair to poor Justine! The creature plants evidence on her for no reason! He’s just doing it to be mean! Ugh.
The creature’s like “In conclusion, my life is terrible, so you have to make me a lady creature to marry.” It’s a lot for Frankenstein to take in.
In part because he feels responsible for the creature (but he says this so grudgingly! Like, I guess I am responsible — no, motherfucker, you are one thousand percent responsible! Why are you being like this!), but mostly because the creature threatens to kill everyone he loves if he doesn’t agree, Frankenstein promises to make a lady creature. Of course he promises this. He is much too useless not to cave to threats and demands.
But guess what else he is too useless to do? Oh, you’re not going to be surprised. He is too useless to MAKE THE SECOND FUCKING CREATURE. Instead of just MAKING THE FUCKING CREATURE, he putters around and whines and moans and gets engaged to Elizabeth (poor Elizabeth) and goes on a road trip with Clerval. This lasts, I’m not shitting you, another entire year. He does a little work, but mostly he swans around Europe being like “I hope the creature doesn’t kill everyone I love, but I really am too stressed to work on doing his demands right now.”
Contrary to how persnickety this post has turned out, I’m genuinely enjoying Frankenstein and I hope you are too. One more week and I will have finished it, and then I will bask in the glow of victory. And hopefully Frankenstein and his jerk incel creature will be gruesomely dead by then.
If you haven’t entered our giveaway for the Annotated Edition of Frankenstein, it’s not too late! You can also link up your #TraLaFrankenstein posts in the Mr. Linky below.
- Between the time when I wrote this post and the time when it published, it also came out that the Santa Fe murderer may have been mad a girl wouldn’t go out with him, because that’s how fucking often this fucking narrative shows up in our fucking lives. ↩