Mary Shelley's Queer Gothic; a love tragedy between friends.

Sexuality in gothic literature is formed upon the basis of certain archetypes, mainly those of hyper and predatory male sexuality, contrasting with vulnerable or excessively powerful female sexuality. Whilst such archetypes can present deviations from the societal norm and address taboos of the time in which they were written, Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ presents an altogether different portrayal of sexuality that transcends these archetypes, forming a complex web of homoerotic subtext and alluding to a love that, at the time of publication, was known by no name, and was only identifiable to those willing to break the surface of literary analysis and look at the hidden, unseen world of Mary Shelley’s queer gothic.

Whilst it is perhaps obvious to consider Victor and his creature as the pinnacle of a male-male relationship within the novel, the bond between them presents itself as less of a romance and more of a duality; they are two sides of the same coin, whereas Victor and his “beloved friend” Henry Clerval compliment each other in their distinct opposite nature. In analysing the relationship between Frankenstein and Clerval, it is important to take into account the narration of the story and the means by which it is being related. The novel is predominantly narrated by Victor, in a retrospective fashion as he tells his story to Walton before his inevitable death. From this, we can assume two things. Firstly, that the events, as they unfold upon the page, have already happened; secondly, that any character descriptions given (save for the ones within the Creature’s narrative) are a reflection of Victor’s opinions. The significance of this lies in part in Victor’s motive for telling his story to Walton – whilst he sees Walton as a friend, he wants somebody to kill the creature if he dies before doing so, and thus he must get Walton ‘on his side’, so to speak. His only way of relating the importance of this to Walton is through meticulous language choices, and so Victor uses certain words to describe certain characters to Walton, allowing for an in-depth analysis of the way he not only views certain people in his life, but the way he wants them to be viewed by Walton also.

This analysis can be applied to the creature in order to illustrate the point of Victor using carefully chosen language to portray his relationship with characters. As soon as he mentions the creature to Walton, Walton adopts Victor’s language and says “daemon, as he called him”, an indication that Victor’s carefully chosen lexical imagery relating to Hell and Satan is already being used to create bias in Walton’s way of thinking. Similarly, just as he wants to associate the creature with the horror in his life, he seems to want to associate Clerval with the goodness that he once knew, in a time before he arrived on Walton’s ship. Victor “loved [Clerval] with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds”. He is Victor’s “beloved friend”, his “Dearest Clerval”; so much so that he is introduced for the first time into the novel with the following:

“It was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore, to my schoolfellows in general; but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva.”

From the first moment Victor describes Clerval, he is set aside from the rest of the characters as someone with great significance and influence over Victor even from their childhood days. This theme of separating Clerval from the rest of the characters prevails throughout the novel; from the introduction of Volume 1, Chapter 3, wherein Elizabeth and Caroline are treated as one entity, with no paragraph breaks separating their illnesses, to the grave scene at the end of the novel, as Henry’s grave is not mentioned in the general mass of Victor’s dead loved ones. The use of Victor visiting the graves of those killed by the creature is especially significant in setting Henry aside as someone special – perhaps someone to be raised to a higher status than the rest – not only by having his grave separate from the “cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father reposed”, but by showing Victor’s reaction to Henry’s grave to be much more extreme. Whereas he vows to live in vengeance of his loved ones’ deaths during the graveside scene of Volume 3, Chapter 7 – “I will preserve my life” – he takes on a much more melancholic approach to the idea of Henry’s grave, saying how he “should have died on the coffin of Henry”. The juxtaposition of life and death here is an insight into Victor’s priorities. His vow to live in pursuit of the creature after the deaths of William, Elizabeth, and his father indicates that his priority is revenge; however his wish for death upon the grave of Clerval seems to transcend this desire for revenge, becoming instead a prioritisation of the ending of Victor’s own life instead of the creature’s. This could be interpreted as a higher form of love that Victor has for Clerval – one of the many indications of romance between them within the novel.

Drawing parallels between Clerval and Elizabeth is a practical way of comparing the different manners with which they are treated by Victor and the creature. Stepping back from their separate graveside scenes, the immediate aftermath of their deaths sheds some light on how Victor was affected by their passing. It has been established already in the novel that Victor is of a nervous temperament, and is prone to seasons of fever after particularly horrific events. It is interesting to note that this occurs after the murder of Henry, but not of Elizabeth. Furthermore, his initial response to seeing Clerval’s body is to get closer to it, “throwing myself on the body”, with disregard for the people around him who obviously regard him to be a murderer. Just as with the graveside scenes, here, his relationship with Clerval transcends the boundaries of the influence of the outside world and his concentration is solely on the body of his friend, and the realisation of his death. On the other hand, upon seeing Elizabeth’s body, he makes no attempt to initially embrace his wife, he simply “fell senseless on the ground” in a sentence that provides little dramatic effect for the reader when compared to how his “human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions” at the moment of Clerval’s death. Also, he will only embrace Elizabeth after her body has been repositioned into a more respectable position by the people of the inn. It could be interpreted that even this embrace is for the benefit of making himself look innocent to the onlookers rather than a genuine expression of his sorrow, because he describes her with “deadly langour” and “coldness of the limbs”. Even his brief recollection of her worth is reduced to “so lately living, so dear, so worthy”, a small, almost mechanical, description of her that pales in comparison to his previous descriptions of nature. Furthermore, the embrace of her dead body is one of the only two times in the novel that Victor embraces Elizabeth – the other is during his dream sequence in which she transforms into his dead mother. This could be symbolic of his abhorrence of intimacy with the female form, and a display of how he would perhaps rather be close in proximity to a dead version of Elizabeth than close in the bonds of marriage with her whilst she is alive.

Taking a step back even further from their deaths, to the days leading up to their deaths, more patterns emerge that indicate a stronger relationship between Victor and Clerval than Victor and Elizabeth. During his travels with Clerval, Victor breaks from his narrative and speaks directly to Walton, changing tense to indicate that his words here are in memory of his friend.

Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words, and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the ‘very poetry of nature’. His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he love with ardour […] And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? Has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator – has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend.

This lament upon Clerval’s existence, which Victor sorely misses, takes up over half a page, and gives one of the greatest indications into the relationship shared by Victor and Henry in the whole novel. His words of endearment – “Beloved friend!” – at the beginning of the passage set the tone for this to be a “gush of sorrow”, as he later claims it to be. The “delight” in recording Clerval’s past words seems to bring Victor some sort of joy in remembrance of his deceased friend, and perhaps a morbid excitement for his own death, wherein he will not be tormented with the memory of Clerval’s death any longer (see “I should have died on the coffin of Henry”). One of the most significant phrases in this passage is “He was a being formed in the ‘very poetry of nature’”. This brings an element of intertextuality into this description of Clerval, as ‘formed in the very poetry of nature’ comes from the poem ‘The Story of Rimini’ by Leigh Hunt; a poem set around the prevalence of Francesca and Paolo’s love despite them being in Hell. The strength of their love within the poem ends with their deaths, as Francesca, after Paolo’s death, cannot bear to live without him and dies herself. There are obviously parallels between this pair of lovers and Victor and Henry, as previously indicated by Victor’s wish for death after Henry dies (a wish which is associated more with Clerval’s death than anybody else’s), and the strength of their relationship despite being in Hell. Only, in this case, it is a metaphorical Hell; a Hell of the mind, in which Victor has to deal with the mental anguish caused by the creature he created. It is thus significant to note that at times of extreme mental anguish, such as after the creation of the creature, Clerval is present to “nurse” Victor back to health.

Ending the lament upon Clerval with “Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever…” and commenting upon his “form so divinely wrought…beaming with beauty” would seem a more fitting way to describe Elizabeth in the days leading up to her death, considering that “beauty” in itself was considered to be an endearing female, or at least feminine, aspect. However, in the days leading up to Elizabeth’s death, Victor refers to his upcoming “miserable marriage”, saying that “to me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay”. He lacks the language of love that he previously used in his referral to Clerval. Instead, Elizabeth is simply “the sweet girl” – and not even ‘my sweet girl’ – showing the distance that Victor would like to create, but is prevented from creating, between them. Whereas Clerval had invoked feelings of “tranquillity”, Elizabeth invokes feelings of “madness”, and even “the tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure”; providing a direct contrast to the unwavering tranquillity provided by Henry and the false sense of calmness provided by Elizabeth that soon slips away to descend into “real insanity”.

Structurally, placing Henry’s death after the destruction of the female creature could be an intentional placement done to compare what the female creature was to the creature, to what Henry was to Victor. The female creature was the creature’s only hope of salvation; she was his entire happiness, his romantic and sexual love, his wife. Surely, if the creature wanted an equal revenge, the target would have been Elizabeth – Victor’s supposed romantic interest, but his initial, unplanned revenge is to kill Henry. Elizabeth’s death was planned, as indicated by the statement of “I will be with you on your wedding night”, but Henry’s death was a crime of a passion, one that could be interpreted as a measure for measure act of vengeance with intent to make Victor suffer in the same way he made the creature suffer. Victor took away the creature’s source of happiness, romance, and sexuality; so the creature took away Victor’s – and Victor’s source of those three things happened to be Henry and not Elizabeth.

To elaborate further on the creature’s perception of Clerval being Victor’s happiness, it is important to look at where the creature was during Clerval and Victor’s travels. At the end of Volume 2, the creature told Victor that he would, upon the commencement of Victor’s labours, “watch their progress with unutterable anxiety”. Since Victor and Henry’s travels served the purpose of conversing with scientific philosophers and finding a suitable place for the creation of the female creature, it could be assumed that the creature maintained pursuit of Victor during this time. This also makes sense due to the creature having known where Victor was working, and thus being able to witness the destruction of the female creature he was promised. If the creature did follow Victor and Henry in their travels, he would have witnessed the “tranquillity” that Henry brought upon Victor, and would have seen the intricate details of their relationship over a period of months. How much of this is implied is unknown, however the decision on the part of the creature to kill Henry after Victor killed the creature’s sexual love could be due to an intimacy witnessed by the creature that was not alluded to in the novel due to period-typical fears of publishing something too scandalous. However, even if this is not the case, the creature must have witnessed some form of intimacy between the pair on their travels that convinced him that Clerval’s death would have a greater affect upon Victor than Elizabeth’s.

Some subtle hints are made to an intimacy between Clerval and Victor that, again, contrast with the intimacy that Victor is expected, but fails, to have with Elizabeth. Whenever Victor and Clerval refer to each other, they prepend their address with “dear” or “dearest”. Whilst, on its own, this could be interpreted as something of norm in the novel – perhaps a respectful way to refer to someone – Victor rarely refers to Elizabeth in this way, despite her continual use of “dear” and “dearest” towards him. There are approximately two times in the whole novel where Victor and Henry refer to each other without using “dear” or “dearest”, suggesting a closeness that can only be hinted at by intimacy of linguistic expression.

Furthermore, when describing Clerval, Victor uses language that is feminine in nature. He speaks of Henry’s form as “beaming with beauty”, indicating that in appearance, he takes on a more female role than perhaps Victor himself does; but this is taken one step further when Henry assumes a female role in more than just appearance. He becomes Victor’s “kind and attentive nurse”, remaining with him throughout his recovery, at the cost of his own education. This presents Clerval as having the role that would be expected of Elizabeth, but in her absence, he fills her presence with his own adaptation of femininity – one that it can be inferred that Victor prefers. Having established, through the dream sequence and his attempt to remove women from procreation altogether, that Victor fears intimacy with females, a relationship with a feminine man would seem fitting for Victor in that he can have the benefits of a “kind and attentive nurse”, without having to suffer the feminine aspects of women that he fears.

In addition to this, Victor sees nature as inherently female. He uses the female pronoun to refer to nature, stating how he “pursued nature to her hiding places”. Nature is his place of solace in times of mental anguish; he rows to the middle of lakes and finds himself wandering in the “immense mountains and precipices”. He believes that nature has “a power mighty as Omnipotence”. Describing nature in a feminine way and describing Clerval as “a being formed in the ‘very poetry of nature’” links Clerval to nature, and thus this omnipotent force, in two separate ways, reinforcing the idea that Victor finds similar solace in Henry as he does in nature. The omnipotence of nature could be interpreted as the power that Henry has over Victor – the sheer intensity of their feelings for each other goes beyond the boundaries of friendship, and possibly beyond romance, to become a source of power parallel only to that of God himself.

Some scholars argue that the character of Elizabeth is autobiographical, and the characters of Victor and Henry are representations of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Lord Byron was Percy Shelley’s closest confidante, and he was present on the night that Mary Shelley conceived the idea for ‘Frankenstein’. It is rumoured that Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were intimate in ways other than friendship, and that Mary Shelley knew about this. Whilst she was soon to be married to Percy, there may have been a rivalry for his affections between herself and Lord Byron – a rivalry which she may have projected onto her characters. This projection onto characters may also be a reflection of the ‘free love’ that Mary believed in. ‘Free love’ was a social movement that rejected marriage on the grounds that it was not necessary for love, and the initial goal of the movement was to separate the state from sexual matters. This could be interpreted as breaking the boundaries of love and allowing for relationships that deviated from the norm, which in this case, was the relationship between Victor and Henry.

In conclusion, ‘Frankenstein’ contains multiple, subtle hints to a relationship between Victor Frankenstein and Henry Clerval. Whilst, at first glance, these hints may not be obvious, as they are shrouded in layers of intertextuality, linguistic devices, and structural placements of scenes, they form, underneath the plot of the novel, a romantic subplot that stretches across the novel. There is nothing obvious to state that a form of love beyond friendship was definitely present, however Shelley created enough allusions to create a sense of ambiguity around whether or not there was romance between Victor and Clerval. The allure of ‘Frankenstein’ is that, no matter which way you approach the novel, the plot is made up of so many complex and intricate strands that the values and themes within build upon various moral messages and underlying meanings, giving the novel a universal timelessness and a unique quality of being able to apply to numerous, diverse interpretations.

[Originally written in 2016.]