Chapter 6 - Monstrous Sights

Summary

Many critics struggle with defining the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as the novel offers a combined monstrosity–deformity concept that blurs the distinctions between moral and physical attributes. The critical focus on categorization, however, marginalizes Shelley’s interest in the ethics of looking, and, in particular, her interest in how looking constructs monstrosity/deformity. The novel reveals the failure of transformative vision in the case of monstrosity and deformity, and invites sympathy for the object of such failure by reiterating instances in which the uncanny is familiarized and vision is changed. The creature’s brief encounter with a blind character offers an opportunity for transformative listening, but this goes awry, and reinforces the central tragedy of the novel.