Shelley's Brilliant Blanks

Frankenstein, for all of its wonderful images, leaves perhaps the most important illustration—at least, I would propose, it is the one the reader craves most—hidden from view: the image of the creature. She informs readers that Frankenstein’s creation is big, ugly, and has facial features (I vividly recall her description of the teeth and hair) that seem to be out of proportion, but what does this manifestation of human creation really look like? Why does Shelley choose to leave the monster—for the most part—blank?

There are more questions to ask on this subject. We’ve observed in class that Shelley does little to explain the actual science behind the creature’s creation. The answer, as far as we’ve casually supposed, is that Shelley wouldn’t have had the kind of scientific acumen necessary to describe the animation of such a creature. But there might be something larger at work here—a method to this conspicuous use of absence.

In “Interaction Between Text and Reader,” Wolfgang Iser says that such gaps in a text are “what stimulates the reader into filling the blanks with projections.” This is not a practice unique to Frankenstein; Iser’s text seems to indicate that these blanks are “the guiding devices operative in the reading process” (1526). Yet, there is no denying that the gaps in Frankenstein seem particularly blatant: the book is about creating a monster, but readers get no depiction of the actual act of creation, and only a meager drawing of the monster.

Iser’s piece left me appreciating the brilliance of Shelley’s move. What does the reader know about the monster’s assembly and animation? We are told the process involves scientific equipment and parts and pieces taken from dead bodies; a rather grotesque stock that the reader can incorporate in any number of ways into his or her “projections.” Likewise, Shelley gives just enough information about the monster’s appearance so that the rest “comes to life in the reader’s imagination” (1527). The act of animation and the presence of a monster are so unique that any attempt to bring them to life with words could fall short of expectations and leave the whole novel in peril. Instead, Shelley lets the reader’s imagination create its own horrible designs.

What are some other noticeable blanks in Frankenstein? Is Victor left rather blank? How does the rather thorough portrayal of the characters’ psychologies impact, if at all, the work performed by our imagination to compensate for a lack of physical descriptions?