Let me preface this: I’m not saying anything supernatural is happening here, but I’m not not saying that, either.

But when I wish for things, sometimes the Universe cranks it up to 11.

For instance, I feel mildly responsible for the current state of…<gestures wildly at everything>. You see, even as a wee Phelan, I was a giant nerd, and I read LITERALLY everything I could get my hands on, which once included a pornographic novel at the age of 7 or so, but that’s a thankfully-hilarious story for another day. But when I say I read everything in the house, I clearly mean EVERYTHING, including all the magazines and newspapers my parents took, and they were LEGION – the local papers plus the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Austin American-Statesmen, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, etc., Fortune, Forbes, Vogue, Harper’s, Mirabella (remember Mirabella?), Southern Living, Good Housekeeping, and, my favorite, Newsweek (it had a bit of everything).

(In the ’80s, I was so well-informed, especially for a kid, that it made me off-putting to both adults and other children. And that, gentle reader, is how I became a writer.)

Of course, many of those intriguing articles contained references to people and events I’d never heard of, and it seemed like most of them were from the ’60s and ’70s. That sparked my interest in American history during that time period (among others – I’m also a student of the, ahem, settlement of the American West).

I was immediately and irrevocably enamored by the Civil Rights Movement. I knew all the major figures: Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, of course, but also Malcolm X, John Lewis, my personal inspiration, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and the Little Rock Nine.

(No Black History Month, you say? Gargle my balls.)

Anyway, while I was busy having a whole-ass crush on Gloria Steinem et al., I used to think to myself, sadly, that all the interesting times that would ever be in history were over, and I was doomed to live in The Boring Part. Oh, how I wished to live in more interesting times.

…

If…all this…is somehow all my fault, I’m sorry. If it’s not, I’m still sorry. I used to be Catholic, remember?

I was reminded of this on Sunday as I mused on this week’s blog post. At the beginning of the year, I made a promise to myself to write more. Thus, I began blogging. Eventually.

Fortunately (?), the Universe knows me, and she don’t leave nothin’ to chance. So I ended up with not one, not two, but three classes where creative writing, essentially, is a huge part of the grade (two require short papers each week, and one requires one big ‘un for the semester).

For those of you keeping score at home, that means I’m writing, on average, about 2,000 words per week, and I haven’t even started The Big Paper yet. To be clear, the classes and blog certainly do not require that much, but y’all know how wordy I am. In any case, I can say, with total confidence, I haven’t written this much since I was still freelancing full time, which was before Harper, age 13, was born.

Damn, it feels good.

But rather than reinvent the wheel every single week, I’m starting a series called Kelly’s Instructors: In Memoriam of Their Patience and Sanity (I’m still workshopping the name). I will include with my essays the questions that inspired these…unique contributions to academia.

If your heart just sank because you think this will be a bunch of boring, dry papers analyzing some esoteric shit nobody cares about, Girl/Man/Y’all, have we met? If not, welcome! Read my papers. I like ’em, so you’re gonna love ’em.

We shall commence with ENGL2238, AKA Reading Fiction. This instructor hates to see me coming.

(I have an A in the class, she’s just not a fan. Which, you know…I get it.)

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Kelly Phelan
Frankenstein Chapters 14 – 20
2-5-25

Q9: Chapters 18 & 19:  A Long Delay

• Look at the passage of time in these two chapters. What in the world is Victor doing?  Why does he take so long to begin the second creation?
• There are also lots of references to “slavery” and “torture” in these chapters. Why? Is Victor as “guiltless” as he says he is towards the end of Chapter 19?
• Finally, once he gets around to starting the process, what’s it like? How does he describe it? How does it compare to the process the first time around? 
• (On a side note, where did he get all the new parts???)

Before I begin an analysis of Victor’s…behavior in Chapters 18 and 19, I need to make two things perfectly clear: 1) As a huge, lifelong sci-fi fan, horror-movie lover, and book nerd, I can’t overstate how much respect I have for Mary Shelley. Those of us who spent our formative years horking down popcorn in the dark in front of monster movies (when our faces weren’t glued to books) owe that part of our childhoods to her. 

2) That said, Frankenstein is basically a treatise on the extent to which we’ve always normalized men’s unhinged behavior for the sake of their “genius.”

Because this post need focus only on Chapters 18 and 19, I won’t waste words and time recapping Victor’s history thus far except to say THIS MAN CREATED A WHOLE ENTIRE HUMAN BEING OUT OF SPARE PARTS. He couldn’t start with, I don’t know, a fish? A cow? Literally anything short of a human being? Apparently, any struggles within Victor’s conscience regarding the morality of this endeavor were drowned out by his “genius.” So I, for one, could not be less surprised that the Creation is able to persuade him to do it again; there’s glory to be had in them thar graves!* Once a narcissist, always a narcissist. 

So why does he take so interminably long to begin the lady Creation? Superficially, at least, Victor procrastinates his task simply because it’s difficult. (All evidence leads me to believe laziness and lack of self-efficacy were common flaws among Victorian men.) He says it himself: “I could not collect the courage to recommence my work,” work that was “horrible and irksome” to him. “It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged,” he says. Once he finally gets started, big surprise, it’s less fun because he knows what awaits him when he’s finished: a being who will, more than likely, rightly demand consideration, just as the original Creation does. 

On a more fundamental level, though, Victor’s hesitation is due to more narcissism and poor judgement. He didn’t think through the inevitable conclusion were he to be successful at his first Creation, and, unsurprisingly, he put little thought into the female creature, either. One evening, after he begins Monster Girl, it finally occurs to him that maybe this isn’t such a swell idea after all. “He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts,” he muses, too late, “but she had not.” 

Victor’s references to “slavery” (ugh) and “torture” in Chapters 18 and 19 represent the mental gymnastics required for him to transform himself into the victim in this situation to absolve himself of responsibility for the grossly immoral act of creating another life without the slightest thought for its experience. He feels no responsibility toward the Creation at all; his only thoughts are “to destroy him and put an end to” the consequences of his actions. 

Victor needs a lot of therapy and a long prison sentence. 

*He definitely got the spare parts from grave-robbing. That man is entirely too comfortable with disassembled humans. Also, that he apparently lacked the courage and fortitude necessary to acquire fresh parts further demonstrates Victor’s weak constitution. 

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Academia ain’t ready for all this.