# Appearance and monstrosity — Frankenstein

> The creature is eloquent, and still every human community judges him by his body before he can finish a sentence.

## Explanation

Shelley splits sympathy and sight on purpose. Readers hear the creature’s education, his joy in the De Lacey cottage, his restraint — and then watch Felix, the rustic, and even Victor respond only to the face. Monstrosity is partly manufactured in the charnel-house assembly, and partly manufactured by spectators who need a category for what frightens them.

That double making matters for Justine as well. She is condemned because circumstances can be arranged to look like guilt; the creature is condemned because his body already looks like guilt. Victor’s failure is that he shares the spectator’s reflex and has less excuse: he built the body. This concept should sit beside the creature’s narrative chapters and his character guide, and it is the bridge to cross-book thinking about isolation and otherness in Jane Eyre’s confined women.

## Links

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