Frankissstein

Victor clarifies his position on The Nature of Embodiment and the Search for Identity in this section, as he and Ry discuss their transhumanist ideals. Transhumanism, broadly, is the position that technology is an avenue to enhancing humanity, even to the point of disregarding the physical human body. Victor conflates this position with the identity of being transgender, though, telling Ry: “Weren’t we just saying that in the future we will be able to choose our bodies? And to change them? Think of yourself as future-early” (119). The issue with Victor’s position is that it compares his non-human desire to have wings with Ry’s gender-affirming care, which retains humanity and seeks to match Ry’s gender expression with his physical form. Wings may be fun, but Victor does not experience body dysphoria or dysmorphia over his lack of wings, while Ry must engage in medical care to resolve such feelings.

Additionally, Victor’s fetishization of Ry’s body introduces a problematic dynamic in the text, as Victor views Ry as an object of interest, rather than as a full person. Victor consistently maintains that he is not gay, implying that he views Ry’s gender expression as a threat to his own sexual identity. Ry comforts Victor, saying: “I know it’s confusing” (119), but this comfort inherently dismisses the validity of Ry’s gender expression, as though Victor would not be attracted to Ry if Ry was “really” a man. At the end of Chapter 5, Victor tells Ry: “Delicious new data, but you will affect the outcome” (123), reducing Ry further from Ry’s own identity and into something impersonal and objectified. To Victor, Ry is just a physical form he finds interesting, and he thinks of Ry only in terms of how Ry will affect Victor’s life and decisions.

Mary’s struggle with The Impacts of Misogyny and Anti-Trans Bias continue as Polidori and Byron try to blame women—specifically Eve and Pandora—for the evils of the world. Mary counters Byron and Polidori, saying that “it is women who bring knowledge into the world quite as much as men do. Eve ate the apple. Pandora opened the box. Had they not done so humankind is what? Automata. Bovine. Contented pig” (133). Claire’s response is that she would like to marry that contented pig, which the narrator notes is the most profound thing Claire ever said. As much as Byron and Polidori try to place the ills of the world on women, it is their discontent—their need for authority and control—that perpetuates the problems of their world, especially regarding their treatment of Mary and Claire. At one point, Byron even threatens to become physically violent with Claire, showing the lengths to which these men will go to maintain dominance in the home.

However, Byron and Mary do agree on the point of the Luddites, a group of English workers who opposed technology that threatened their livelihood as the owning class sought to automate their jobs to save money. Polidori defends the machines, but Mary responds: “Are not these new inventions the disrupting force? […] Is there not violence in forcing men to work for lower wages in order to compete with a machine?” (134). Mary’s response introduces an economic component to the theme of Redefining Humanity Through Technology. The mechanization of labor reduces human workers to components in a vast machine—this is the demotion that the Luddites resisted through sabotage. In the present day, as AI threatens a whole new wave of human economic displacement, Victor echoes Polidori’s framing of industrialism as inevitable: “So we press ahead, Ry, not knowing when the breakthrough will come, but knowing that it will come” (168). Victor’s concern is not with the impact of AI on everyday life, but with the advancements that might become possible if he succeeds in his research.

Victor’s tunnels contain horrifying things, such as the room full of animated hands: “Spatulate, conic, broad, hairy, plain, mottled. The hands I had brought him. Moving.” (169). Ry is disturbed by Victor’s experiment for the same reason Mary finds Frankenstein’s monster inhuman; Victor is playing with humanity like a toy or object, rather than as a physical form with identity and dignity. Victor justifies his experiment, explaining to Ry how the hands might aid people who have lost limbs, but Ry simply responds: “It’s horrible” (170). Critically, during this discussion, Victor says that he and Ry are “both freaks,” to which Ry responds: “Don’t call me a freak because I’m trans” (171). In Victor’s pursuit of science, he has forgotten about humanity, so he sees Ry’s gender identity as a similar disregard for humanity. However, Ry corrects Victor, noting how transgender identity is not the same as Victor’s transhumanist pursuit.