Bodily Acts of the Subaltern Creature

In "Can the Subaltern Speak" by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she brings up the suicide of Bhubaneswari Bhaduri. Bhabaneswari planned her death, purposely choosing the moment when she was menstruating to prove that she had not been pregnant so that people could not speculate that an "illicit" pregnancy was part of her death. Spivak states:

Bhubaneswari had known that her death would be diagnosed as the outcome of illegitimate passion. She had therefore waited for the onset of menstruation. While waiting, Bhuhanswari...perhaps rewrote the social text of sati-suicide in an interventionist way. She generalized the sanctioned motive for female suicide by taking immense trouble to displace, in the physiological inscription of her body, its imprisonment within legitimate passion by a single male (2123).

I propose that the Creature, by murdering William, the brother of Victor Frankenstein, and subsequently, the wrongful prosecution of Justine as the murderer, is in a way a Bodily Act comparable to that of Bhubaneswari's. This event in the story shows how the dominant public misunderstood the purpose of the Creature's act and translated it to subjugate another person who would be considered a twice over subaltern: Justine, poor and female.
Before committing the murder, the Creature wanted to educate William as a companion, however, upon discovering that he was kin to his creator, he states:

"I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed 'I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him" (97).

By placing the locket which he found on William's person, and by placing it with Justine the Creature states:

"Here, I thought, is one of those whose smiles are bestowed on all but me: she shall not escape: thanks to the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man, I have learned how to work mischief. I approached her unperceived, and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress" (97).

Even though the Creature accomplished his goal of bringing misery to Victor, Victor still did not comprehend the full reason as to why the Creature was committing these acts. The Creature had voiced time and again that he sought to vanquish loneliness from his life, he wanted acceptance and understanding, but the world had judged him on based upon his physical appearance and not by the intentions of his soul. The Creature communicates to Victor "I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?"(98) However, Victor's reaction to the creation of another "creature" to stunt this misery for his first creation is interpreted by Victor stating "You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another being like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone!"(98) Victor internalizes the Creatures intentions by selfishly thinking that the Creature seeks to live his life to harass him, instead of actually just wanting a companion so that he can leave his past behind and flourish in a new life. However, it is the Creature that tries to reason with Victor, it is the Creature who tries to effectively communicate, but Victor seems to not be able to hear the meaning of his words. The Creature states:

"I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature's sake, I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realized" (98).

The only way Victor seems to understand the Creature is by the Creature physically committing some form of act to gain his attention; although the Creature can speak, Victor neither trusts nor understands his words.