The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein

Jolene Zigarovich, University of Northern Iowa

First published in Science Fiction Studies v.45 (July 2018), by DePauw University.

Abstract

With the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein in 2018 and the upcoming 25th anniversary of Susan Stryker's influential essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" in 2019, the intersection of Gothic literature with gender studies has had a lengthy history. Stryker's essay profoundly shifted interpretations of Frankenstein and altered the view of the Creature's gender malleability in literary criticism. This essay examines the influence of Stryker's essay on studies of gender and Shelley's novel. Written in the early 1990s, Styker's essay powerfully expressed her transsexuality, her physical transition, and her alignment with the Creature. This personal, bold exposure of transgender experience paved the way for various memoirs and narratives about trans identification and the journey to embodiment. Like Frankenstein and its creature, her essay has been morphed, resurrected, disseminated, cut, dissected, sutured, and (re) birthed. I argue that suturing science, medicine, reproduction, and science fiction with trans embodiment stimulated a positive monstrosity, exposed the unlimited body, and created a space of radical possibility.