What if Men Were Just Seen as Bodies?

            On Sunday I spent a couple of hours finishing a new poem, the meter of which is based on a melody that I’ve had in my head for years and finally found a home for. It’s called “Dancing Signature”. It mentions my daughter though and so I had to run it by her to see if she’s okay with it.

I made the first notes for my research essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein:

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents a dilemma of failed parenting in the early 19^th Century. It depicts the challenge of the father in the traditional maternal role. Shelley’s father could not handle the role of parenting alone and so he sent her away. It is about parental responsibility. Frankenstein had the opportunity to nurture the child that he had brought into the world, but in rejecting that responsibility he inflicted danger and violence on the society in which he lived. He rejected his own work of art as an aesthetic failure but did not take into account the achievement in itself. The monster (his child) was a genius but he only saw its ugliness. He left his own child to fend for itself and blamed it when it reacted violently to society’s rejection of it. This was the most intelligent creature to ever walk the Earth and its father could have taught it how to behave but he did not want to bear the brunt of its challenge to the conventions of society. Frankenstein wanted to blend into and sleep in the familiar. He betrayed the call of both the artist and the parent, which is to find a place in the world for those that we bring into it. Frankenstein failed as both a father and a mother.

This is a research essay and so far I’ve found two books that I might be able to use: Parenting in England, 1760-1830: Emotion, Identity and Generation by Joanne Bailey and The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In her letters she wrote that she was disgusted by her stepmother, which is a similar reaction to Frankenstein’s response to his own creation. Her father rejected Mary’s marriage to Percy Shelley and so in a sense their marriage can be seen as a type of Frankenstein’s monster. One could also see Shelley herself as the monster in the sense that as a woman people may only see her as a body. In that sense there is no difference between ugliness and beauty.

I had extra old cheddar on a piece of toast for dinner but it didn’t feel like enough and so I had the last bag of Kuna Pops that I’d gotten from the food bank. They were stale.

I watched an episode of Rawhide. This story begins with a new trail hand named Lance who always wears a bandana over the lower part of his face that makes him look like he’s about to rob a train. This, plus his bad attitude makes the other men uneasy. Then a man named Brazo deliberately sets his horse free and walks into the camp, asking for a job. Gil hires him but it seems obvious right away that he’s there because he’s interested in Lance. Gil figures out that Brazo is a gunfighter named Brazen. At first it is thought that he’s after Lance but it turns out that Lance is his little brother. Lance reveals that he wears the mask because he has a burn scar on his face, though he makes it out to be worse than it is. Lance leaves to become a hired gun for a crooked rancher named Slate. Slate shoots Lance in the back because his first job was to kill his brother but he refused. Brazo goes after Slate and Gil and Rowdy follow. In the town Brazo talks with the restaurant owner, Rainy. She asks him to wait one day before going after Slate and she’ll talk the town into backing him up, but he can’t wait. Rainy says, “God go with you Brazo” and he responds, “Well, that might be a little awkward for both of us.” With the help of Gil and Rowdy he takes out Slate’s men and finally Slate. Brazo rides off but Rainy is sure he’ll be back.

Rainy was played by June Lockhart who later starred as Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space.

Slate was played by Deforest Kelly, who later starred as Dr. McCoy on Star Trek

Two future science fiction stars in one western! Both played doctors too except that she’s not the medical kind.