Gay frankenstein
Exploring The Integral Queer Undertones Of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Earlier this month, the National Theatre in London made its 2011 production of Frankenstein, adapted for the stage by Nick Dear and directed by Danny Boyle, available to stream for free via their YouTube page. There were two separate recordings of this play, one featuring Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature, and the other featuring the actors in swapped roles (Miller and Cumberbatch alternated the parts throughout the production’s run).
"Frankenstein" is a novel of many meanings. It is not only a distinctly queer function, but a feminist work, a labor of social critique and an examination of the human condition.
The motive behind this theatrical switcheroo is rooted in the themes of Mary Shelley’s classic novel and Dear’s adaptation: it highlights the dichotomy of these two supposedly alternative beings, the plan that they mirror each other in every way. As such, the line between man and monster, between “good” and “evil,” is so thin, it's practically invisible. However, Dear chooses to punch up this aspect of Frankens My curiosity about Frankenstein was confirmed when I left academia to become an activist. During this period, I entered therapy to deal with why I felt so persecuted inside, and was given an unpublished paper written in 1977 by Jungian-oriented psychologist Mitch Walker, “The Problem of Frankenstein” (now posted on www.uranianpsych.org), that analyzed Frankenstein as a gay cherish story. Walker had an idea that an archetypal spirit configuration—which he called the “double”—was at the heart of the felt human capacity for Accurate Love and self-realization—but only if titanic “competitor” qualities were consciously wrestled with in a process that eventually revealed this inner twin to be a magical phallic companion and mediator between the ego-identity and the underworld of the psyche. My growing sense that Frankenstein amounted to a canonical “gay” literary work on a par with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol was finally validated this year when I learned that queer historian John Lauritsen had published a new book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. Lauritsen is known as a gay liberationist who co-authored, with David Thorstad, The Preceding Homosexual Rights The Victorian period is characterized by the paradox of a grand opening in culture as well as a tremendous constraint. It is known as the period of change and social advances and the day of severe regard for the traditions. Under the reign of Queen Victoria, the Industrial Revolution came of age, blossomed, and brought sweeping change across the country and the world. Life switched from a base primarily dictated by the land one owned to a social structure based on commerce and manufacturing (Greenblatt, 2005). Get a custom analyze paper on Homosexuality in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Learn More In this switch, people living in these changing times began to question the status quo creating a great deal of social upheaval. Social class structures started to break down, and women, too, began to ask their allotted place in society. However, at the equal time, these breaks from the traditions incited a response reaction in favor of more traditional social roles in other areas, such as the refutation of male sexual relationships to the extent that one could be sentenced to death for participa The Gothic genre is a notoriously queer genre. Writings about the wide-spanning queer themes and narratives of the Gothic are so numerous that even a rapid search will produce over 9.2 million results. ‘Frankenstein’ is no exception to this level of study, although some aspects of the novel have recieved greater urge than others. The queerness of Frankenstein’s Monster has been explored broadly in art, television, fiction, queer theory, theories of alienation, feminist writings and personal essays. Shelley’s own bisexuality, however, has not been written about to the same extent. Walton is also rarely looked at from a queer perspective, despite the persistent, homoerotic overtones of his narrative (which opens and closes Victor’s narrative). There is much about the Monster that mirrors aspects of being queer and/or transsexual in society. Some trans people might identify with the embodied descriptions of Frankenstein’s Monster when he laments being made of “horrid contrasts” and parts. The Monster gives voice to aspects of body dysmorphia, which can turn your body into something that feels alien, monstrous and treacherous. Qu
Homosexuality in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Research Paper
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