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Facing the Ugly: The Case of "Frankenstein"Author(s): Denise GiganteSource: ELH, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 565-587Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30031925Accessed: 07/05/2010 12:46

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FACING THE UGLY:THE CASE OF FRANKENSTEINBY DENISE GIGANTE

He approached; is countenancebespoke bitter anguish,combinedwith disdainand malignity,while its unearthlyuglinessrendered talmost oo horrible or humaneyes.1-Mary WollstonecraftShelley,Frankenstein

I. THE VIA NEGATIVAOF UGLINESSWhateverelse can-and has-been said aboutVictorFrankenstein'smonster,one thing cannot be denied: the creature s exceedinglyugly.But in what does this ugliness consist?Such a question is deceptivelysimple; any recourse to aesthetic theory is bound to come up empty.

Traditional ategories from the eighteenth century-the sublime, thebeautiful, he picturesque-exclude the ugly,andthoughthe grotesque(particularlyprominent later in the nineteenth century) may at firstseem related,it is never specifically nvokedin Frankensteinand mustnot be confusedwith the ugly.While the etymologicalheritageof thegrotesque combines both the comic and the horrific, the ugly lackscomic effect.2 In fact, aesthetically peaking, he ugly simply acks.If itis mentionedatall,it is treated as a negative ormof the beautiful:eitheras a lack of beauty n generalor as a gapin the beautifulobject.3Hume,forexample,speaksof "defects" r"blemishes"n the beautifulobjectinhis essay "Of the Standardof Taste" (1757).4 Because the ugly isassumed to be everythingthe beautiful is not, it emerges as a meretautology. n A PhilosophicalEnquiry ntothe Originof ourIdeasof theSublimeand Beautiful(1757), Burke sumsup the Enlightenmentpointof view:"Itmay appear ike a sortof repetition... to insisthere uponthe natureof Ugliness."5AlthoughBurke'sbinaryof the sublime and thebeautiful does not assert an antithesis between these two aestheticmodes, it adoptsa bifurcatedapproach hat Kantwill later take up inThe Critique of Judgement (1790).6 For while Kant's third CritiquetransformsBurke's mpiricistaestheticssubstantially,t does not deviatefromhis basicassumptionabout the ugly,that it is a shadowform of thebeautiful,its silent, invisiblepartner.ELH67 (2000) 565-587 2000 byThe JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress 565


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difficulty has more to do with Victor's failure to get in touch with his ownexistence (the "real"Victor) than with any lack of materiality on the partof the Creature himself.9 Once we confront him, as Victor does, in theraw ugliness of his own existence, we discover that he symbolizesnothing but the unsymbolized: the repressed ugliness at the heart of anelaborate symbolic network that is threatened the moment he bursts onthe scene, exposing to view his radically uninscribed existence.If we are to employ the Freudian vocabulary of repression, however,we must be careful to distinguish the ugly from the uncanny [unheimlich]object, which Freud discusses in similar terms as "everything that oughtto have remained ... hidden and secret and has becomevisible,"andwhich thus constitutes a return of the repressed in the subject.10 Likethe ugly, the uncanny occupies a "remote region" of aesthetics that hasbeen theoretically neglected:

The subjectof the "uncanny".. undoubtedly belongsto all that isterrible-to all that arousesdread and creepinghorror; t is equallycertain, oo,that he word s notalways sedinaclearlydefinable ense,so that it tends to coincidewithwhateverexcites dread.Yet we mayexpectthatit impliessomeintrinsicqualitywhich ustifies he use of aspecialname.One is curious o knowwhat hispeculiarqualityswhichallowsus to distinguish s "uncanny"ertain hingswithinthe bound-ariesof what s "fearful."11

Both the uncanny and the ugly fall under the rubric of the fearful; thecrucial distinction between them is that while something may beuncanny for one person and yet not so for another, the ugly is universallyoffensive. The uncanny finds its being in whatever object serves totrigger an intrusion of repressed childhood complexes into the mind ofthe subject; hence nothing is intrinsically uncanny. The Creature'sugliness, on the other hand, constitutes a return of the repressed notlinked to any particular childhood fixation. Instead the Creature appearsas a return of what is universally repressed, or what Freud's precursor, F.W. J. Schelling, considers the horror at the core of all existence. Ourconcern, consequently, is not with the specific subject of psychoanalysisso much as with ugliness itself. The task will be to discover how Shelleyextracts the Creature from the crack opened up by the ugly ineighteenth-century aesthetic theory in order to posit him as thataesthetic impossibility: the positive manifestation of ugliness.Much critical debate surrounding Frankenstein has focused on thediscourse of political monstrosity and how it relates to Victor's "miser-able monster" (F, 87). Fred Botting, for example, surveys the context ofDenise Gigante 567


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political monstrosity rom Hobbes to Burke and concludes that mon-strosity represents"acomplex and changingresistance to establishedauthority."'2 ike the monstrous, he ugly resists,but what it resistsisnot establishedauthorityso much as the aestheticization hat enablesthatvery authority.Accordingly,his essayshalladdressnot monstrosityper se so much as the ugliness that precedes and predetermines thatmonstrosity. ndeed I must agreewith HaroldBloomthat "abeautiful'monster,' ven a passableone, would not havebeen a 'monster."'13utwhat is it about the ugly that aesthetic theory cannot face and thatinevitably ranslates nto the socio-politicaldiscourseof monstrosity?In his Reflectionson the Revolution n France,Burkemaintains heneed for "pleasingillusions"and "superadded deas"to beautify or"coverthe defects of our naked shiveringnature."14 Mandevillestatesthe case moreplainlyearlier n the centurywhenhe writes that"allMenendeavouro hidethemselves, heirUglyNakedness, romeachother...wrappingup the true Motivesof their Heartsin the SpeciousClokeofSociableness."15 As Victor'sexperience during the 1790s (when thenovel is set) demonstrates,direct exposureof the raw,unaestheticizedstuffof humanity its "UglyNakedness")hreatensnot onlythe subjectitself,but the entiresystemof symbolicrepresentation,he disruptionofwhich would constitutethe "horribleand disgustfulsituation" R, 90)that Burke describesas monstrous:

Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity andferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts offollies. In viewing this monstrous tragicomic scene, the most oppositepassions necessarily succeed and sometimes mixwith each other in themind. (R, 11; my emphasis)What Burkefears is the irruptionof the repressedsocialreal throughthe skin of "pleasing llusions" hat contain-and sustain-society. Anyfissures n the "systemof manners" ecome infections,"mentalblotchesand running sores" that inevitably infect the social body with the"contagion f their ill example" R, 88, 116). Significantly,hese particu-lar "running ores"springfromthe aristocracy,he luxurious f "miser-able great" R, 116), for it is not onlythe lowerordersthatconstitute athreat to society:it is whateverthreatensto disruptorder as such, toundo those verydistinctions.'16Cousins drawsupon this notion of "contagion," roposingthat theugly object appearsas "aninvasivecontaminating ife strippedof allsignification," ne that "gorgeson meaning"as it engulfs the subject568 Facingthe Ugly


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with its own lack of meaning, its excessive incoherence." In fact, inFrankenstein, he term "ugly" merges at the precise point when thespeaking subject is about to be consumed by such incoherence. De-scending the Mer de Glace after a traumatic encounter with theCreature, orexample,Victordescribesthe wind "as f it were a dulluglysiroc on its way to consume [him]"(F, 176). While the sirocco is asinvisibleas wind and hence cannot,strictlyspeaking,qualifyas ugly,hispathetic fallacy s apt. For as the "contaminatingife"of the Creaturespills out from his overstretchedskin to pursue Victorphysicallyandpsychologically,t threatens to "consume"him and the entire symbolicorder in whichhe is implicated.Thus while it is couchedin admittedlyboyish terms, William Frankenstein's atal encounter with the Crea-ture-"monster uglywretch youwishto eat me, andtearme to pieces"(F, 169)-contains a fundamental nsight into the nature of uglinessitself: the ugly is that which threatens to consume and disorderthesubject.Williamcries, "Letme go, or I will tell my papa" F, 169), andit is appropriatehat his defense shouldbe a psychologicalappealto theName of the Father,the site of symbolic authority hat guarantees heyoung Frankensteinhis groundof meaningin the face of consumingchaos.Thatthe Creature s ready o gorgeonthatmeaningwe may nferfromhis desperate plea, "Child,what is the meaningof this?"(F, 169),whichhe uttersas he draws he boy forcibly owardhim,wrenchinghishandsawayfromhis eyes. Likethe aestheticcategoryof the uglyitself,the Creaturecannot be faced.

II. THE BURKEANANTI-DEFINITIONSince our purpose,however, s to face the ugly,not as inversionorlack but aspositivefact,we must firstdevelopit in the darkroom f lateeighteenth-centuryaesthetic theory. Burke'sdefinition of ugliness isbriefanddivides ntothreeparts.The first statesnegatively hat the uglyis that which the beautiful is not: "I imagine [ugliness] to be in allrespects the oppositeto those qualitieswhichwe have laiddownfortheconstituentsof beauty" E, 119).To considerthe Creatureaccording oBurkeanaesthetics,therefore,we mustviewhim in reversethrough helens of the beautifulasthe aestheticobjectof Victor's rtistic ashioning.IndeedVictorprefersto regardhimself not as a scientist so muchas "an

artistoccupied byhis favouriteemployment" F, 85), selecting disparatepartsfor theirbeautyrather hanchoosingan entirebodyto reanimate.In a passagereminiscentof Mary Shelley'soriginal"reverie" 1831;F,364), in whichshe firstenvisionedthe Creature,he describesthe sceneof creation:Denise Gigante 569


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... by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yelloweye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motionagitated its limbs.How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineatethe wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured toform? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features asbeautiful. Beautiful -Great God His yellow skin scarcely covered thework of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black,and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriancesonlyformed a more horridcontrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almostof the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, hisshrivelled complexion, and straight black lips. (F, 85-86)

Victor'sdescriptiontakes the form of what might be called an "anti-blazon,"wherebyindividual eatures,such as the Creature'shair"ofalustrousblack,and flowing"and "his teeth of a pearlywhiteness,"aresuturedtogetherwithotherunsightly eatures(his"work f musclesandarteries,"his "straight lacklips") hatradicallydisruptaestheticrepre-sentation. As cracks and fissures emerge in the representation,thevisceral reality of the Creature leaks through to destroy all fantasy.Despite the factthatVictorspecificallychose eachfeatureforits beauty("I had selected his featuresas beautiful"), he combined form cannotaestheticallycontainits own existence.Here Victor's creative method resembles that which MaryWollstonecraftascribes to the sculptorsof Greek antiquity:"beautifullimbs and features were selected from various bodies to form anharmoniouswhole ... It was not, however,the mechanicalselection oflimbs and features;but the ebullition of an heated fancy that burstforth."'8While in the case of the Greek statue, the sculptor's"heatedfancy" manages to contain the hodgepodge of individuallyselectedlimbsandfeatures,Victor"went o it in coldblood" F, 191).As a result,what "burst orth"was not his vision so much as the brute fact of theCreaturehimself. Coleridgewould have condemnedthis "mechanicalselection of limbs and features"as a "mechanicalart,"one inherentlyunable to transform he artist'smaterials nto a harmoniouswhole."9Following Francis Hutcheson, who earlier in the eighteenth centuryhad asserted "the universalAgreement of Mankind n their sense ofBeauty from Uniformityamidstvariety,"Coleridgedefined beauty as"multeityn Unity."20 "TheBEAUTIFUL,"he writes,"isthatin whichthemany,stillseen asmany,becomesone."21f the Creature s not to beseen as a mere mechanisticcollection of limbs, he must inspire hisviewer with the imaginative power necessary to unite his variousanatomicalcomponentsinto the totalityof a humanbeing. Otherwise,570 Facingthe Ugly


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likethe "mechanistic hilosophy"hat Burkecomplainswould "confoundallsortsof citizens... intoone homogenousmass" R, 216), the creationof an individual romanatomicalparts,or a socialbodyfrompartsthatare themselves ndividuals, anbe a futile-if notperilous-endeavor.22What immediately disruptsVictor's maginativeeffort to unite hisCreature's ariouscomponentsinto a single totalityis the "dullyelloweye of the creature." t dominateshis thoughts, doublingfroma single"yellow eye" to two "watery eyes" as he struggles to contain it inrepresentation.23 e noticeswithdisgusthow the eyeballsarelostin themurkiness, he "dunwhite"of their surrounding ockets,and he evendoubts"ifeyes they maybe called"(F, 87). Yellow,watery,anddun,theCreature's yes areantithetical o the beautifuleye that Burkeclaimshas"sogreata sharein the beautyof the animalcreation"(E, 118). In thesection directlybefore "UGLINESS," ntitled "TheEYE,"he writes:

I thinkthen, that the beauty of the eye consists, first, in its clearness;...none are pleased with an eye, whose water (to use that term) is dull andmuddy. We are pleased with the eye in this view, on the principle uponwhich we like diamonds, clear water, glass, and such like transparentsubstances. (E, 118)By focusingon the ideal of transparency,Burkedrawsattentionawayfrom the materialityof the eye itself. While a clear eye serves as aproverbialwindow into the soul, the Creature's ye is little morethanareminderof its own existence: a lumpof vile jelly attachedto the skull.With reference to the "depthless eyes" of Shelley's Creature,Zizekwrites:"Thenontransparent,depthless'eye blocksout our accessto the'soul,'to the infiniteabyssof the 'person,' husturning t into a soullessmonster: not simply a nonsubjectivemachine,but rather an uncannysubject hat hasnotyetbeen submitted o theprocessof 'subjectivization'which confersupon it the depth of 'personality.'"4 Leavingasidefor amomentZilek's use of the word "uncanny,"is insight is groundedinthe Burkeanaesthetictheorythat serves as context for Frankenstein.As a mere reminderof its own existence,the Creature's"depthless"eye serves as the prototypefor varioushideous progeny, ncludingthe"deadgrey eye"of Polidori'svampire,anothercreatureto emerge fromthe same evening at VillaDiodati:

... some attributed [their fear] to the dead grey eye, which, fixing uponthe object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to piercethrough to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheekwith a leaden raythat weighed upon the skin it could not pass."25Denise Gigante 571


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If the vampire is opposite to the Creature in that he constitutes anexcess of representationover existence,his eye is also opposite to theCreature'seye. While the latterpreventsthe viewer from penetratingthroughto the Creature's oul, the vampire's"deadgrey eye" cannotpenetrate throughto the "heart"or soul of his viewer. Both eyes aremonstrous,and maybe consideredopposite sides of the same coin: afacial blob that blocks or clogs imaginativerepresentation.Viewed inthese terms, Milton's nsistencethat despite his blindnesshis eyes hadremained"asclearandbright,withouta cloud,as the eyes of men whosee most keenly"mayindicatemore than aestheticvanity.26What is atstake is his subjectivityas such, a transcendenceover his own physicalexistence in the eyes of the world.Thus the invocation rather,amenta-tion) to the "heav'nlyMuse" n the third book of ParadiseLost-"theseeyes, that roll in vain/ To find thy piercing ray,andfind no dawn; Sothicka dropserene has quenchtthirOrbs"-makes a pointof referringto his blindness as one thathas not cloudedhis eyes (the "dropserene"being the Latin medical term for blindness that does not affect theappearance of the eye).27Elsewhere this point becomes central toMilton'sdefense against he chargeof being "Amonster,dreadful,ugly,huge, deprivedof sight."28Unlikethe "dullyellow"or "deadgrey"eye, the beautifuleye divertsattentionfromthe substanceof the eye itself. Burkewritesthat"theeyeaffects,as it is expressiveof some qualitiesof the mind,andits principalpower generallyarisesfromthis"(E, 118-19). In directcontrastto theCreature'sugly eye, therefore, standsVictor'sdescriptionof the "fair"Elizabeth:"Herbrowwas clearand ... herblue eyes cloudless... nonecouldbeholdherwithoutlookingon her as of a distinctspecies, a beingheaven-sent,andbearinga celestialstampin all her features" 1831;F,323).29 Victor'sfantasytakes possession of him here and suggests athree-dimensionality f the humanbeing,rather hanof the browortheeye itself.As a result,the merefact of her head,the physicalstuffof it,is repressed.Indeed his representation ontainsher materialityo sucha degreethatshe becomescompletelyetherealized: he is "heaven-sent"and bears a celestial "stamp."Whereas the "unearthlycreature"isclassed beneath the "superiorbeauty of man"(F, 192), Elizabeth iselevated above it as "a distinct species"-presumably one unencum-bered by those "real"bodily functions that Wollstonecraftfor oneconsidered "so very disgusting."30 Like the fair Elizabeththe "won-drously fair"Safie exhibits an "animatedeye" and "countenanceofangelic beautyandexpression" F, 144).Whileananimatedeye conveysthe animatingmindbehind, a staticeye only increasesthe chance that572 Facingthe Ugly


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zone of existence and choke him with disgust.35The realityof theirnaked bodies servesas a foil to the etherealizedElizabeth,whose skindisplaysno cutaneous incoherence but is completelyof a piece. Whilethe "celestialstamp"on all her features testifies to her wholeness as acreatedproduct,the Creature's kinstrugglesunsuccessfully o concealthe rawphysicalityof his gigantic (thoughnot quite Brobdingnagian)stature. The stitches we can only assume are holdinghim together (avisual image impressed upon us by screen versions of Frankenstein)exposethe mechanicsof his creationandproducean effect opposite tothat of Elizabeth'smystified"stamp."In the second part of his (anti-)definitionof the ugly, Burkestatesthat"thoughuglinessbe the oppositeto beauty, t is not the oppositetoproportionand fitness. For it is possible that a thing maybe very uglywith any proportions,andwith a perfect fitness to anyuses"(E, 119).Certainly,he Creature s not "opposite o proportion."Despite the factthat Victor's yes "start[ed]rom theirsockets"at the sightof him,Victormakesclearthatthe Creature's"limbswere in proportion" ndthat, inaccordancewithhis eight-foot stature,his figurewasdesigned "propor-tionably large" (F, 82-86). As Burke explains, it is not ugliness but"deformity"hat is opposedto proportion:"deformitys opposed ... tothe compleat,common orm" (E, 102; emphasisin the original).Onemustkeepin mindthatBurke s working rom anaesthetic radition hathe feels has been unsystematicin its use of terms and inexact inmappingthe terrainof the non-beautiful.Even the Creaturerefers tothe "deformity f [his]figure,"despite the fact that,though large,he isnot technicallydeformed(F, 141).When he sees himself in a transpar-ent pool forthe firsttime, he laments "thefataleffects of this miserabledeformity" (F, 142). Yet as his creator seems to know better thanhimself, deformityis a distinct categorynot to be confused (literally,fused together)with the ugly.If the Creature s not "opposite o proportion," eitheris he oppositeto "fitness."Likethe monkey,whom Burkeclaimsmaybe physically itand still qualify as ugly, "he is admirabl[y]calculated for running,leaping, grappling,and climbing:andyet there are few animalswhichseem to have less beauty in the eyes of all mankind"(E, 105). TheCreature,too, is fit-or too fit. His superhumanabilityto overcomenaturaladversity,arfrominspiringadmiration,horrifieshis persecutedmaker:"hehad followed me in mytravels;he hadloiteredin forests,hidhimself in caves,or takenrefugein wide anddesertheaths" F, 193). Inshort, just as the Creature s opposed to those qualitiesthat constitutebeauty (a clear eye, beautifulskin,and so forth),he is not opposed to574 Facingthe Ugly


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those qualities(proportionandfitness)that are not opposedto ugliness.(I haveallowed the convolutedsyntaxof the previoussentence to standin orderto emphasizethe difficultyof discussingthe ugly in terms ofaestheticdiscourse.)In the finalthirdof his section on "UGLINESS,"Burkeseparates heugly from the sublime:"UglinessI imagine likewise to be consistentenoughwith an idea of the sublime.But I wouldby no means insinuatethatuglinessof itself is a sublimeidea, unless unitedwith suchqualitiesas excite a strong terror" (E, 119). While the beautiful object iscalculated o excitepleasureand the sublimeobject pain,the paradoxsthat sublimepainin turnleads to pleasure:"Whendangerorpain presstoo nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simplyterrible;but at certaindistances,and with certainmodifications, heymaybe andthey are delightful,as we every day experience" E, 39-40).Although t would be somewhatreductive(andin the terms Burke setsforth, naccurate) o do so, it canbe temptingto read the Creatureas anobjectof sublimity.Victorcomplains hat the monsterhasconsumedallhis thoughtsand"swallowedup everyhabitof [his]nature"(F, 84), andsuch obsession with the object is typicalof the sublime. Burke couldalmost be describingVictor when he writes that in the experience ofsublimity"the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannotentertainany other, nor by consequence reasonon that object whichemploys t"(E, 57). AsVictorhimselfrelates,"Theform of the monsteron whom I had bestowedexistence was for ever before my eyes, andIraved ncessantlyconcerninghim"(F, 91). Not onlydoes Victorexperi-ence several rounds of the "terror" ssociatedwith sublimity,but hetakesperverse delightin pursuinghis Creatureon a homicidalchasetothe ends of the earth,the very landscapes dentifiedwith the Burkeansublime.Howeverthe principal actorof sublimeexperience-being elevatedfrom terrorto a comprehensionof greatness-is absent from Victor'sexperience. Instead, he becomes psychologicallydebased after everyencounterwith the Creature:a "miserablewretch"(F, 227) like theCreaturehimself. Instead of attainingan awarenessof his subjectivecapacity,he grows feverish and weak, descending into the chaoticjumbleof sensations romwhichhe hadoriginally mergedas a subject.As he loses control over his own existence, he tries fruitlesslyto runfromit, begging his father,for example:"takeme where I may forgetmyself, my existence"(F, 209). Afteranotherparticularlyeverishnighton the Orkney slands,he remarks:"when I awoke,I againfelt as if Ibelonged to a race of human beings like myself' (F, 196). Like hisDenise Gigante 575


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80). It would follow that the concept of evil must likewise be distilledfrom the ideal of pure ugliness, but (and one may readily anticipate theproblem) while we can distill the good from the ideal of beauty, there isno aesthetic ideal of the ugly from which to distill evil or anything else.The object finds its being in the realm of the imaginative ideal for Kant,and if there is no ideal of the ugly, in what manner can the ugly object besaid to exist? Kant says it does not. He avoids his own theoretical aporiaby claiming that the ugliness that cannot be denied in nature must berepresented within given aesthetic categories, namely the beautiful orthe sublime, for to present the ugly qua ugly would make the viewerturn away in disgust-and hence obviate all aesthetic judgment:TheFuries,diseases,devastations f war,andthe like,can(as evils)bevery beautifully described, nay even represented in pictures. One kindof uglinessalone is incapableof being representedconformablyonaturewithoutdestroying llaestheticdelight,andconsequently rtisticbeauty, namely,that which excites disgust. For, as in this strangesensation,which depends purely on the imagination,he object isrepresented s insisting,as it were,uponourenjoyingt, while we stillset our face against it ... (C, 173-74)What we discern in the passage above is that the ugly is that whichdisgusts; and it disgusts because it "insists." Whether we pursue this"insistence" back to its Latin root sistere (to stand still) or the German"insist" [bestehen] to its root, stehen (to stand), we find that what"insists" is that which "stands" in the way. The ugly is offensivelyobtrusive in standing between the subject and its representation of theobject. It stands in for itself, as it were, refusing to budge, and thusstripping the subject of imaginative capacity. Freud argues that reality isthat which stands in the way of desire, and in this sense what we findinsisting is "real existence" as such. It stands in the way of the subject'squest for the elusive Ding-an-Sich, the thing the subject can neverattain, and thus must incessantly desire, by presenting itself as anunwanted Ding. It obtrudes itself through the noumenal gap in theobject, clogging it, and hence closing the subject off from its ownimaginative capacity.While the subject is seeking the phantasmal Ding-an-Sich, in otherwords, the ugly stands in the way, like Blake's "opake blackening fiend,"to turn the subject back on its own opacity.39 Unlike the ugly, thebeautiful object can be imaginatively comprehended. And even thesublime object, though it inspires a representation of limitlessness, canstill be comprehended as an object: it causes "a representation ofDenise Gigante 577


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limitlessness,yet with a super-added houghtof its totality" C, 90). Inboth kinds of Kantian ublimity, he dynamicand the mathematical,hemind attainsan awarenessof its own capacity, ts abilityto "fitover"sublimity tself withits own"super-addedhought."We maycall naturesublime,but what we reallymeanis thatwe cancontain t, that it is ourmind, ratherthan nature,that expandstoward the infinite. But if thesublimeobject is not truly"limitless,"hen, we might posit the ugly,orthat whichcannotbe containedas anobject,as a moreradicalantithesisto the beautiful.For if beautyis a transparency,n the sense that it isnothing distinct from the feeling of the subject, and if ugliness is itsradicalantithesis, hen whatemergesis ananti-transparency,nopacityor materialabhorrence hat leaksthroughrepresentationo disorder hemind of the subject.We may imagine beautyas a formcausingdelight,but the ugly stops us in our tracksas somethingwe can'teven imagine.Since Kantianaesthetics are founded upon the repressionof theobject bythe subjectsuchthat the subjectcanalways"fitover,"andthusprove itself more extensive than, the object, that which the subjectsuddenly fails to contain in representation appears as a traumaticexcess-a suddenintrusionof whatshould not be there. In Kant's ase,that excess is "realexistence"as such. In this sense the uglyconstitutesa "return f the repressed"moreradical hanthe Unheimlich,orit doesnot merelythreatento unsettle the subject; t threatens o destroy t [zuGrunde zu richten].Thus unlike the "creepinghorror" hat overtakesthe Freudian subject of the uncanny, the response to the ugly isimmediate. Victorabruptly lees his newbornCreature n "horroranddisgust" F, 86), andthe Creature'sirstpublic appearances prolepticofthose that follow: "[The shepherd] turned on hearing a noise; and,perceiving me, shriekedloudly,and, quittingthe hut, ran across thefields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appearedcapable" (F, 133-34). Adorno has suggested that by repressingwhatKantcalls"realexistence" he beautifulobject only manages o preservethe fear of it: "Terror tself peers out of the eyes of beauty as thecoercion that emanates from form."40 His insight may go some waytowardexplainingwhy,when "realexistence"finallydoes breakout inthe mode of the ugly,a violent reactionshouldbe axiomatic.In his advertisementto his 1809 exhibition, Blake illustratesthetypicallykneejerkresponseto the ugly.There the "UglyMan"appearsasone of the three"AntientBritons"whoescapedfromthe lastbattleofKingArthuragainstthe Romans:

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The most Beautiful,the RomanWarriors rembled before andworshipped:The most Strong,they melted before him and dissolved n hispresence:The most Ugly they fled with outcries and contortionof theirLimbs.41At the sight of the Ugly Man, the warriors exhibit no uncanny "creepinghorror" but violently contort their limbs and cry out. Blake explicitlydescribes him as "one approaching to the beast in features and form, hisforehead small, without frontals; his jaws large; . . . and every thingtending toward what is truly Ugly, the incapability of intellect."42Whilethe Ugly Man serves Blake's particular purposes as a figure of Urizenicreason, he is bestial in that he has not undergone the process ofsubjectifying his existence. He demonstrates the same incapacity toelevate himself over himself and achieve coherence in the eyes of hisviewer that is characteristic of the ugly.Along similar lines, Coleridge, quoting Plotinus, asserts that inconfronting beauty, "the soul speaks of it as if it understood it,recognizes and welcomes it and as it were adapts itself to it. But when itencounters the ugly it shrinks back and rejects it and turns away from itand is out of tune and alienated from it."43 The soul shrinks back fromthe lack of harmony it finds threatening to its own coherence; what itcannot comprehend it rejects. The Creature is alienated from everyonehe confronts precisely because his ugliness prevents those he meetsfrom seeing past his "realexistence" to the greater sum of his being--orfrom imaginatively representing him at all. Indeed the one person (oldman De Lacey) who forms an opinion of the Creature as an integratedbeing is blind-and hence unable to process his ugliness. By refusingthat such ugliness can aesthetically exist, aesthetic theory itself turnsaway, shrinking back, rejecting, and (in Kant's terms) setting its faceagainst it.

IV. THE BIRTHOF THE UGLYIN FRANKENSTEINIf the groundwork of aesthetic theory yields no better understandingof ugliness than its very resistance to aestheticization, we might attempta dialectical transposition of the problem into its own solution. We

might, in other words, conclude that such resistance itself, and thethreat it poses to the very survival of the subject qua subject, is whatdefines the ugly. If the aesthetic can be considered the only mode oftranscendence left in a highly rational, empirical age, then the de-aestheticizing ugly comes fraught with all the horror of not just primalDenise Gigante 579


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but final chaos, of apocalypticdestruction. From the outset, Victorattemptsto fortifyhimself againstsuch destructionby identifyinghisplace withina largernetworkof national,political,andfamilyties:I AM by birtha Genovese;and my family s one of the most distin-guished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many yearscounsellorsand syndics;andmyfatherhadfilled severalpublicsitua-tionswithhonourandreputation. F, 63)By parceling out his subjective content into the various links thatcomprisehis chain of existence,Victorcloaks himself in the "pleasingillusions"of symbolic identity.As he consecutivelyelides "family" nd"republic,""ancestors" nd "counsellors,""father"and "publicsitua-tions,"his genetic encodingfuseswiththe social,and hispatrilinearandlargely patriotic conceptionof his originsserves to distance him fromthe realityof the "birth"tself.The Creature, on the other hand, whose birth is quite literallypatrilinear, lunges directly nto the "strange haos"(to borrowBurke'sexpression)of thatbirth:

IT is withconsiderable ifficulty hat I rememberhe originalaeraofmy being:allthe eventsofthatperiodappear onfusedand ndistinct.Astrangemultiplicity f sensations eizedme, and I saw,felt, heard,andsmelt,atthe sametime;and twas, ndeed,a longtimebeforeI learnedto distinguish etweenthe operations f myvarious enses.(F, 130)While Victor'snarrativecommences under the pretense of absoluteclarity("Iam .. ."),the Creatureemphasizes he murkinessof memory,the "considerabledifficulty"of rememberinga past that is "confusedand indistinct": primal,amnioticsea of sensation.44Yetthe mere factthat he tries to remember those origins distinguisheshim from hismaker,who evades such messinessby describinga self that is a social,andlargely amilial,construction:"Mymother's endercaresses,andmyfather'ssmile of benevolentpleasurewhile regardingme, are my firstrecollections" 1831; F, 322). While Victor'sdescription llustratestheLacanianparentalgaze, or the constitutionof the subjectas a "thing obe lookedat,"his ownhorrifiedparentalgaze-abruptly turnedawayatthe veryinstant he Creature s aboutto confirmhimselfasa subjectandreturn the gaze in the form of the infantile"grin" hat "wrinkledhischeeks"(F, 87)-parodies this formativemoment.Because the Creaturecannotgrasphold of any symbolicconnectionsin reconstructinghis past,he gropes blindlyfor the sourceof his "real"580 Facingthe Ugly


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being. He tries to remember the original era ("aera")of that being as ifit were a thing, an "aura"hovering about him as a sign of his integrationinto the world at large. His indistinct aera resembles the "eyry offreedom" that Mary Shelley associates with her own earliest memoriesin the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein (F, 361). As an alternate formof "aerie" or nest, the "eyry"of freedom may be seen as a realm ofembryonic "aeration,"an original "aera"of being. And like the jumble ofreferents that hover around "aera," the "strange multiplicity of sensa-tions" that the Creature recalls as his earliest memories reflects the"strangechaos," the monstrous Burkean disorder "of levity and ferocity,and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together" at the core of the socialorder. Revealingly,Adorno locates the origin of ugliness in the transitionfrom the archaic to the post-archaic: "The concept of the ugly may wellhave originated in the separation of art from its archaic phase: It marksthe permanent return of the archaic."45That same transition from thearchaic-chaotic to a post-archaic, symbolic order is one the Creaturecannot seem to accomplish for himself. He remains stuck, striving forsubjective completion in the fermenting crack of the ugly.Unable to affirm himself as a subject, the Creature thus commences hisown autobiographicalnarrativeby invertingVictor'sdeclarative"Iam"intothe pathetically interrogative '"Whowas I? What was I?"46 He despairs of"brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one humanbeing to another in mutual bonds," and then demands: "where were myfriends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no motherhad blessed me with smiles and caresses; . . . I had never yet seen abeing resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. Whatwas I?" (F, 149). Throughout the novel, he continues to complain of hisisolation-"No sympathy may I ever find" (F, 244), "I am quite alone"(F, 245), etc.-and the fact that he cannot identify his position in thesignifying "chain of existence and events" (F, 174). This is a version ofthe same chain Byron, writing at the same time, has Manfred label "thechain of human ties."47 Both are derived from the chain of phenomenalreality that Burke refers to in his aesthetic inquiry as the "greatchain ofcauses, which linking one to another ... can never be unravelled by anyindustry of ours" (E, 129).48 And it is this very "chain of existence," fromwhich the Creature is excluded, that keeps the other characters in thenovel in existence-paradoxically, by repressing their "real existence."After Victor's father, for instance, loses his wife, his son William, andhis adoptive daughters Justine and Elizabeth to death, and his other sonVictor to what he assumes must be madness, his "springsof existence"suddenly give way and he dies in Victor's arms (1831; F, 356).49Denise Gigante 581


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Elizabeth repeatedly reminds Victor of his own implication in thesustaining"chainof existence andevents":"Weall ... depend upon you;andif you aremiserable,what mustbe ourfeelings?" F, 181).Yet asweknow from his own self-portrayal,Victor needs no remindingof hisposition in this intersubjective symbolic. He informs Clerval thatwithout social connections "we are unfashioned creatures, but halfmade up" (1831; F, 320). With the deaths of his mother,brother,sister(s),andfather,Victorhimselfbecomes increasingly"unmade-up."His family skin becomes fissured, and he is driven to renounce thenationalidentityso important o his sense of self: "Myfirst resolutionwas to quitGenevafor ever" F, 225).AsFrancesFergusonsuggests,theskin of all symbolic dentity n Frankenstein"theskin of inclusiveness")is inevitablyoverstretched.50Ultimately,the same may be said for Frankenstein.Shelley'snovelhasbeen traditionallyriticizedasuneven,a chaotic ntertextualumble.In a reviewof TheFrankensteinNotebooks,StuartCurran peaksof "thedepth of the intertextualityn Frankenstein" nd comes to the defenseof Shelley's authorship:"the entire machineryof this novel, from itsknowledge of contemporary chemistry in the early chapters to itselaborate and ongoing play againstParadiseLost was the project ofMary Shelley."'51is use of the term "machinery"s propitious,for itharks back to the Frankensteiniancreative process: a method ofproduction mechanicalto the degree that it cannot contain its ownreality.AlthoughShelley struggles o containher "veryhideous... idea"(1831;F, 360) in narrative rameafterframe,the Creaturehimself willnot be restrainedbyhis textual"skin," ut insteadbreaks orthas one ofthe mostenduringfiguresof the Romanticperiod.He takeson a life ofhis own, proliferatingwildlyand engenderingan ever-increasingnum-ber of dramaticand cinematic adaptations,"hideousprogeny"of theoriginal"hideousprogeny" 1831; F, 365).52As he slips out of her text, he slips out of her control, and Shelleyfindsherselfsurprised, orexample,at the theatrical uccessof RichardBrinsley Peake's Presumption:or the Fate of Frankenstein,whichopened at the English Opera House on 28 July 1823. The Creatureremained nameless in that original production,and Shelley was im-mensely pleasedthat in the list of dramatispersonaethere was a blankspaceforthe nameof the Creature:"thisnamelessmode of namingtheu{n}namable s rathergood."53 Her commentoffersitself up to a faciledeconstructionthat were perhaps best handed over to Derrida forpropertreatment.In his analysisof the KantianHlichkeit [ugliness],Derrida writes: "The disgustingX cannot even announce itself as a582 Facingthe Ugly


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sensible object without immediately being caught up in a teleologicalhierarchy. It is therefore in-sensible and un-intelligible, irrepresentableand unnamable,the absolute other of the system."54 n later enact-ments, this seeming aesthetic impossibility-the unrepresentable,unnamable positive manifestation of ugliness-takes over the identity ofhis creator and comes to be known as "Frankenstein." Less than amonth after Peak'sadaptation, for example, the Royal Court Theatre inLondonproducedFrankenstein; r, The Demonof Switzerland,wherein a slippery switching of subtitles, "The Demon of Switzerland"replaces"TheModernPrometheus."The "or,"hen, becomes a pivotaltransition,avanishingmediatorbetween "Frankenstein"nd"Demon,"withthe latterthreatening o engulfthe former.Finally,as the Creaturebreaksout throughthe variouspores (thatis, the -'s andor's) n thetext,he takesoverthe textitself,becoming,in effect, Frankenstein.Thefact that it is common, if not de rigueur, for audiences to equate theCreature himself with Frankenstein (and consequently, Frankenstein)confirms the premise that no matter how one may attempt to contain it,the ugly ultimatelyburstsforthto consumewhatever t confronts:n thiscase, MaryShelley.PrincetonUniversity

NOTESI amgrateful o ChristopherRovee,SusanWolfson,andSarahChurchwell or criticalattention o this essay.I wouldalso like to thankDavidL. Clarkand those who attendedan earlierversion of the paperat the 1997 NASSRconferencein Hamilton,Ontario,aswell as Slavojiek,who providedthe "vital park."1 MaryWollstonecraftShelley,Frankenstein; r, TheModernPrometheus:The1818Version,ed. D. L. MacdonaldandKathleenScherf(Peterborough,Ontario:Broadview

Press, 1996), 127. Hereaftercited parentheticallyn the text and abbreviatedF. The1831 introductionand 1831 textualvariants ncluded as appendicesto the Broadviewedition are also cited parenthetically nd abbreviated1831;F.2 While the term "ugly"derives from the Old Norse ugglig (causing fear ordiscomfort),the "grotesque"descends from the fantasticalhybridforms painted in"grottoes" f ancientRomanbuildings.Mostaccountsof the grotesquefrom the time ofJohn Ruskinstress its hybrid (comic/horrific)nature:Wolfgang Kayser ocuses on thedemonic aspectof the grotesquein TheGrotesque n Art and Literature trans.UlrichWeisstein [New York:Columbia Univ. Press, 1957]); MikhailBakhtin,on the otherhand, embraces its low or comic aspect in Rabelais and his World (trans. Hdlne

Iswolsky [Cambridge:MIT Press, 1968]); Philip Thomson discusses the tension be-tween the comic andthe terrifyingn TheGrotesque London:Methuen,1972);ArthurClayborough speaks of the grotesque as ugliness born again through humor (TheGrotesque in English Literature [Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1965]); Geoffrey GaltHarpham xaminesgrotesquecontradictionOnthe Grotesque:Strategiesof Contradic-tion in Art and Literature[Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1982]);to name a few.Denise Gigante 583


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3 The negative modality of the ugly was first recognized by Hegel's disciple KarlRosenkranz, in his Aesthetik des Haisslichen (1853). Hegel himself conceives of beautyas a dynamic category in tension with its spectral other, the ugly. Yet because Hegel'sAesthetics (1823-28) postdates the development of the ugly in Frankenstein, this essaywill focus on the late eighteenth-century aesthetic theory of Burke and Kant.4 David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757), in Selected Essays, ed. StephenCopley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 138 and following.5EdmundBurke,A PhilosophicalEnquiry nto the Originof our Ideasof the Sublimeand Beautiful (1757), ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press,1958), 119. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text and abbreviated E.6 As Samuel H. Monk has pointed out, this binary of the sublime and the beautifuldeparts from the earlier binary of the "non-beautiful" and the beautiful, which theaesthetic theory of the first half of the century had employed: "Hume, it will be recalled,

had taken pain and pleasure as the effects of the ugly and the beautiful, and it may besaid that in general this was the point of view of the first half of the century" (Monk, TheSublime:A Studyof CriticalTheories n XVIII-CenturyEngland[AnnArbor:Univ.ofMichigan Press, 1960], 91). I use the term "non-beautiful" since Hume does notconcern himself with "the ugly"; rather, he claims that "the sentiments of men oftendiffer with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds" (Hume, 134; my emphasis). Thedistinction between ugliness and deformity is one Burke himself emphasizes in hisPhilosophical Enquiry, as we shall see.7 TheAbyssof Freedom Agesof the World:An essay by Slavojiekwith the textofSchelling's Die Weltalter, trans. Judith Norman (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press,

1997), 21. Compare to Mark Cousins, "The Ugly" (2 parts), AA Files 28 (1994): 61-64and AA Files 29 (1995): 3-6.8 iek remarks on a similar phenomenon in science fiction film, where the ugly oftenappears as an "excess of stuff that penetrates through the pores in the surface, fromscience fiction aliens whose liquid materiality overwhelms their surface . .. to the filmsof David Lynch where (exemplarily in Dune) the raw flesh beneath the surfacethreatens to emerge" (Abyss of Freedom, 22).9 Technically, one need not shy away from this spectral aspect of the Creature since,as both Cousins and iek suggest, spectrality itself is a form of excess; it is the antithesisto ugliness in the form of ghosts, vampires, and other phantasms, who provide an excessofrepresentation

over existence. Victor himself refers to the Creature as a vampire: "myown vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave" (F, 105). One might further recallhis origins in Fantasmagoriana,ou Recueil d'Histories d'Apparitionsde Spectres,Revenans, Fantomes, etc., the volume that inspired the guests at Villa Diodati (includingMary and Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and Byron) to try their hand at an original ghoststory.When the Creaturedoes present himself, however, it is alwaysas an excess of existence.10Freud here relies upon Schelling's definition, which he selects from the complexetymology of the Unheimlich in "The Uncanny" (1919, in The Collected Papers ofSigmund Freud, ed. Philip Rieff, 10 vols. [New York:Collier, 1963], 10:27; emphasis inthe original)." Freud, 19 ("remote region"; "The subject of').12 Fred Botting, "Frankenstein's French Revolutions: the Dangerous Necessity ofMonsters," in Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory, ed. Botting (Manches-ter: Manchester Univ. Press, 1991), 139. James A. W. Heffernan worries the question ofmonstrosity with regard to film in "Looking at the Monster: Frankenstein and Film"(Critical Inquiry 24 [1997]: 133-58); he writes that film makers "compel us to face-

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more frankly and forthrightly than critics of the novel usually do-the problem of thecreature's appearance ... What makes Victor's composition of such beautiful featuresmonstrous?" (142-43). See also Chris Baldrick's Foucaultian reading of monstrosity as asocial vice in "The Politics of Monstrosity," New Casebooks: Frankenstein, ed. Botting(Macmillan: Houndsmills, 1995), 48-68; Peter Brooks's Lacanian-Derridean "GodlikeScience / Unhallowed Arts: Language, Nature, and Monstrosity," in The Endurance ofFrankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel, ed. George Levine and U. C.Knoepflmacher (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979), 205-20; as well as Brooks's"What Is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)," in his Body Work: Objects of Desirein Modern Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), 199-220. According toBrooks, the Creature's monstrosity results from his failure to enter the signifying chainof language and achieve meaning as a transcendental signified. Our inquiry is concernedwith the ugliness that predetermines (rather than the monstrosity that results from) hisinability to enter the greater signifying chain of society at large.13 Harold Bloom, "Introduction" to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (New York:Penguin,1965), 65.

14 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), ed. Thomas H. D. Mahoney(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 87. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text bypage number and abbreviated R.15 BernardMandeville,The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, PublickBenefits(1714), ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 1:234-35.16Adorno makes a similar claim for different political ends, namely that the disruptionof the social order is a positive effect of ugliness. For him, the ugly represents the

socially repressed (in the sense of oppressed), and he argues that in order to avoiddeteriorating into a vacuous plaything, art must assert the ugliness of the social realagainst the ideological status quo of the beautiful ideal. Ugliness thus acquires a socialdimension that Burke would acknowledge, but condemn. See Theodor Adorno, "TheUgly, the Beautiful, and Technique," in Aesthetic Theory, 2d ed., ed. Greta Adorno andRolf Tiedeman, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press,1996), 45-61. One also finds the socio-political disruptive potential of the ugly in theaesthetic theory of Kant: the ugly threatens the community of feeling subjects united inthe intersubjective realm of the imaginative ideal.17 Cousins, "The Ugly" (part 1), 62.18Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 2d ed. (1792), ed.Carol H. Poston (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), 171. Mary Shelley wasstudying her mother's volume during the genesis of Frankenstein (The Journals of MaryShelley, 1814-1844, ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols. [Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1987], 1:149). Henceforth I will ground this discussion of Franken-stein by filtering most cross-textual references through the Journals.19Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of MyLiterary Life and Opinions (1817), ed. George Watson (London: J. M. Dent, 1975), 218;compare to Mary Shelley, Journals, 1:102.20 FrancisHutcheson,Inquiryinto the Originalof Our Ideas of Beautyand Virtue(London: J. Darby, 1725), 11; Coleridge, "On the PRINCIPLES of GENIAL CRITI-

CISM concerning the FINE ARTS, especially those of STATUARY and PAINTING.EssayIII"(1814),in TheCollectedWorksof SamuelTaylorColeridge,ed. H. J. Jacksonand J. R. de J. Jackson, 14 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969-98), 11.1:369(emphasis in the original).21 Coleridge, "Principles," 371; emphasis in the original.

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22Victor'smethodof selectinghe mostbeautiful artsandsuturinghemtogetherparallelsanother"mechanistic"rocessin vogue duringthe late-eighteenthandearly-nineteenthcenturies: he modeof anthologizingeauties.Volumesof "Beauties" ereproduced romrecycled parts,whichcould be culledeitherfroma single poetic corpusor fromseveralcorpora asin the case of The Beautiesof Milton,Thomson, nd Young 1783])to formacomposite extualbody n the Frankensteinian ode. Whether hisprocessof clippingandculling and stitching togethercalls more attention to the individualbeauties or to thefissuresntheoverallproduct,t is notmy purpose o discover.Suffice t to note that fVictorhad textualprecedent orhis artisticmethodof selectinganatomical eauties,he facedtheaddedchallengeof animating hem into something greaterthan the sum of theirparts.23 The qualities of "yellowness"and "wateriness" re also prominent in Shelley'sportraitof the Creatureas he firstappeared o her "withyellow, watery,but speculativeeyes"in the 1831 introduction F, 365).24 Zizek, Tarryingwith the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology(Durham:Duke Univ.Press, 1993), 240 n.25 JohnWilliamPolidori,TheVampyre 1819;Oxford:WoodstockBooks, 1990), 27-28.26 John Milton,"Second Defense of the English People" (1654), in CompleteProseWorksofJohn Milton,ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven:Yale Univ.Press, 1953-82), 4.1:583.27 Milton,Paradise Lost (1674), in CompletePoemsand MajorProse, ed. Meritt Y.Hughes (New York:OdysseyPress,1957), 3.22-25. Compare o MaryShelley,Journals,1:146-47.Paradise Lost is hereaftercited parentheticallyn the text by book and linenumbers and abbreviatedPL.28 Milton, "SecondDefense," 582. He adds: "UglyI have never been thought byanyone,to my knowledge,who has laideyes on me. WhetherI am handsomeor not, Iam less concerned" 582-83).29 This 1831 descriptiondwells longer on Elizabeth'sphysical appearance (vs. hermind andmanners) hanthe 1818 edition. Yetsince the two versionsdo not conflict inany waythat is relevanthere, I will drawupon them both.30 Wollstonecraft,128. The Creature's tatus as a distinct(subhuman) pecies recallsthe downtrodden emima romWollstonecraft's nfinishednovelMaria,who complainsthat she was"treated ike a creatureof anotherspecies":"I was . .. hunted fromfamilyto family,[I] belonged to nobody-and nobodycared for me. I was despisedfrom mybirth,and denied the chance of obtaininga footingfor myselfin society" Maria;or theWrongsof Woman[1798;New York:W. W. Norton, 1975], 38-40). AlthoughJemimaultimatelyearnsaplacewithinsociety,the Creature'suglinessblocksall of his efforts tobecome"linked o the chainof existenceandevents,fromwhich[heis] excluded"F, 174).21 iek,Abyssof Freedom,22. Compareto Cousins,"TheUgly"(part 2), 4.22 Notably,Milton'sothermajordefense against he chargeof being uglyis that of hissmooth skin: "Nor is it true that either my body or my skin is shriveled"("SecondDefense," 583).23Alongsimilar ines, Burke dentifiessmallnessas a qualityof the beautiful:"Agreatbeautifulthing, is a manner of expression scarcelyever used;but that of a great uglything, is verycommon"(E, 113).34JonathanSwift,Gulliver'sTravels(1726), 2d ed., ed. Robert A. Greenberg (NewYork:W. W. Norton& Company,1970), 95. Compare o MaryShelley,Journals,1:145.35 This scene might be read against the Lacanianthesis that "a minimum of'idealization,'of the interpositionof fantasmatic rame [sic] by means of which thesubject assumes a distancevis-h-visthe Real, is constitutiveof our sense of reality-

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'reality'occurs insofar as it is not (it does not come) 'too close"' (iek, Abyss ofFreedom,23).36 ImmanuelKant,The Critiqueof Judgement(1790), trans. James Creed Meredith

(Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1952), 43. Hereaftercited parentheticallyn the text andabbreviatedC.37SamuelRichardson,Pamela;or VirtueRewarded 1740;New York:W. W. Norton,1958), 206; emphasisin the original.Compareto MaryShelley,Journals,1:146-47.38Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1819), 3.4.46-47, in Shelley's Poetry andProse,ed. Donald H. Reimanand SharonB. Powers(New York:W. W. Norton, 1977),190;CharlesLamb,"Onthe Dangerof ConfoundingMoralwith PersonalDeformity"(1811), in The Worksof Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E.V. Lucas, 6 vols. (London:Methuen,1903), 1:64-65.39 WilliamBlake,Jerusalem 1818), 7.8, in TheCompletePoetryand Proseof William

Blake,ed. David V. Erdman(New York:Anchor,1988), 149.40 Adorno, 1.41 Blake,Descriptive Catalogue(1809), in TheCompletePoetry& Prose,526.42 Blake, Descriptive Catalogue,544-45.43 oleridge, "Principles," 83n. In similar erms,Kierkegaardwritesof Socrates,who"spokeabout ovingtheugly":"What hen is meantbythe beautiful?Thebeautiful s theimmediateanddirectobjectof immediate ove, the choice of inclinationandof passion.Surely here is no need to command hat one shalllove the beautiful. Butthe ugly Thisis not anythingto offer to inclinationand passion,which turn awayand say, 'Is thatanything o love "'(Soren Kierkegaard,Worksof Love [1847], trans. HowardV. Hong

and Edna H. Hong [Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press, 1995], 373).44 Thismust not be confoundedwiththe "monstrous irth"described n Ellen Moers'sseminalessay"FemaleGothic," n her LiteraryWomen(New York:Doubleday, 1976),90-110. For even the most monstroushuman birth yields a creaturewho is alwaysalready nscribed nto a family,a citizenship,a language,and a gender.45 Adorno,47.46 Comparewith Adam'smore hopefulwonderment n ParadiseLost (8.270-71).47 LordByron,Manfred,A DramaticPoem,2.2.102, in TheCompletePoeticalWorks,ed. JeromeJ. McGann,7 vols. (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1980-81), 4:73.48 An internalizedversion of the signifyingchain appearslater in the novel, whenVictorclaims:"Iknownot bywhatchain of thoughtthe ideapresenteditself' (F, 206).49 In the 1818 texthis death resultsfrom an"apoplectic it,"whichis a more scientificwayof sayingthat "thespringsof existencegave way"(F, 222).50 FrancesFerguson, Solitudeand the Sublime:Romanticismand the AestheticsofIndividuation New York:Routledge, 1992), 109-10.51 StuartCurran,Review of TheFrankensteinNotebooks,ed. CharlesE. Robinson,2vols., in TheWordsworthCircle27 (1996): 211.52 Albert J. Lavalley lists thirty-one film and stage productionsof Frankensteinbetween 1823 and 1975 ("The Stageand Film Childrenof Frankenstein:A Survey,"nTheEnduranceof Frankenstein,286-89). Compareto Heffernan,133-58.53 Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt, 9-11 September 1823, in The Letters of MaryWollstonecraftShelley, ed. Betty T. Bennett, 3 vols. (Baltimore:The Johns HopkinsUniv. Press, 1980), 1:378.54 Jacques Derrida, "Economimesis," rans. R. Klein, Diacritics 11 (1981): 22;emphasis n the original.

facing the ugly

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