The Creature Becomes a Monster:

Using Feminist Disability Studies and the Politics of Recognition to Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Abstract

I employ the framework of Feminist Disability Studies to critically examine how the intersecting factors of disability, gender, and the politics of recognition weave an interpretation of the narratives of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein creates a creature in his lab and gets frightened when seeing it afterwards because the creature looks different from what is perceived as ‘normal’. He immediately recognizes the creature as a ‘monster’, ‘fiend’ and ‘devil’. After being rejected by his creator, the creature interacts with other characters and gets similar reactions from them because society conforms to a certain set of ableist norms about physical appearance. Frankenstein’s misrecognition has a damaging effect on the creature’s understanding of itself as he emulates the socially induced behavior of misrecognition and behaves monstrously. I argue that though the creature is artificially created by Frankenstein, the disabled monster is the byproduct of sociocultural stigma and oppression. Drawing from Feminist Disability Studies, I demonstrate how societal norms and expectations shape the experiences of disabled individuals, particularly in relation to gendered expectations. By doing a thorough textual analysis of the novel, I also argue that Shelley’s narrative serves as a powerful commentary on the marginalization of those perceived as different.