Recuperating Frankenstein's Creature as a Drag Icon
E.D. Hardy
http://shoottheprojectionist.blogspot.com/2008/07/recuperating-frankensteins-creature-as.html(Note: This essay discusses the text of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus as it was revised by Mary Shelley in 1831 and published by Random House in 1993. It does not consider other versions of the story, filmed or otherwise.)
Immediately after the moment of his 'birth,' Frankenstein's Creature is abandoned by his creator. The Creature wanders about, attempting to make his way in the world with no education or socialization save that which is stored in the recycled human tissue used to construct his body. He observes the daily activities of a family living at a cottage in the forest, but is able to make little sense of their comings and goings until he finds "on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing... some books. ...They consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter" (Shelley 167). From these few texts—and from his purely specular fascination with the cottagers—Frankenstein's Creature culls his entire personality. In this way he is like the modern day drag queens that, in Juan A. Suárez's words, "...acquire their identity through mimesis of pre-existent images and icons, emerging from the already-seen, the already-read, the already-done" (Suárez 192). (See
