Autism in Horror/Dark Literature: FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, was a book written by no other than the monster queen herself, Mary Shelley, in 1818. Topics surrounding science, and the maddening, almost magical pace it seemed to be rampantly changing, enticed Shelley, her husband, and friends on some rumored, stormy night in 1816. A competition stirred, encouraging a natural talent for occult and supernatural sciences in Shelly, and thus the first edition of Frankenstein graced the public. However, Shelley's name didn't appear in the book till the second edition was published in 1821.

I don't really like to get into the nitty-gritty of the book's details. I just want to go on record to say that I think Mary Shelley is a goth icon and a fun author to both respect and mythologize for the mere purpose of devotional imagery; for dark, play-pretend.

And it's more the fascination I have with the monster that I wanna talk about today: Frankensteins's creation, more tenderly known as the daemon, is constantly being banished by its own father. Why? Well, for starters, after Victor Frankenstein isolates himself in a greasy, mossy laboratory, deep within a castle and for years, dug his own hands in a pile of lone and forgotten cemetery mulch, it only makes sense that he would be appalled by what's finally come to roost. And truthfully, a lot of people argue that Victor Frankenstein never truly does face the consequence of his choices and instead projects his horrific feelings of self onto something so innocently his: a life, uninterested in being dismissed. A creature that we only get to hear about from the mouth of someone who despises its existence. A monster who was rightfully upset.

When I first read Frankenstein, I truly think it was perhaps the first time I'd ever been challenged to think about the binary of human vs monster. Themes that surround, plague, and hover over the heads of everyone living in and around ableism - yet, it was new to see it in a book. To have the author point back to me as if to ask, "Well, do you sympathize or demonize?" and that really stuck with me. Although "monster" is hardly an appropriate metaphor for anyone, it still had significance.

It did, however, remind me a lot of Carl Jung's theory of The Shadow. I think for some autistic and neurodivergent people, Jung's ideas of identities, these rejected "undesirable" parts of ourselves that we keep hidden from others in order to appear "good", has always low-key confused me; if the shadow is just a collection of repressed forms of our personality, then is masking any different from every person's performance of neuro conformist standards? Is it just different, because the pressure lays more on people whose brains are less compromised by external programming? That they have to work harder for this performance to appear "natural"?

Shame, I would argue, is the emotional center of the story; if the monster is everything Victor Frankenstein cannot stand about his dark desires, claiming that he was possessed by them and objectively villainizing those pursuits of the unethical sciences, what it took to create sprouted life as if they were not attached to his hands. As if he had spent his whole life searching, seeking a macabre knowledge and begging to be an orchestrator of life. I think Frankenstein handles shame as a lot of us do; poorly and disgusted by our own pain. Not being able to see the usefulness of the creature being unruly and unbrushed by the human's need for corrupted control; true shadow work is not combing out the shame, but walking next to it. Sitting with it, side by side, and realizing that it may never blossom into something useful. That it may never be molded into artful healing or sellable merchandise or proof that your pain leads to something meaningful; it doesn't always have to be understood, but it does have the right to be wholly and truthfully expressed. To demolish the wells of repression and be touched in real-time, by life and the markers of what it means to be felt, inconsequently. Without the fear of its creator, labeling it evil.