Warrene Ott

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the second verse of "Sorry Angel" by Serge Gainsbourg. That's halfway through the song. I also made an adjustment to my translation of the final verse. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I printed our two-page handout on one sheet and left for the Bildungsroman seminar a little before 11:15. At the top of the stairs at University College my presentation partner Parisa was pacing nervously back and forth. She was feeling anxiety but I told her she was among friends and to just jump in. I had brought both my handout and my original presentation on which I circled some main points.

            When the time came to start I just winged it. These were my main points: 

            The creature's education is a metaphor for the academic limitations many women are stifled with. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft says, "The little knowledge acquired by women with strong minds is... more random and episodic... acquired more by sheer observations... What women learn they learn by snatches." This speaks of a narrowness of range of educational opportunities for women that can be symbolically represented by learning through "a small but imperceptible chink" in the wall as Frankenstein's monster does. 

            The creature is referenced with masculine pronouns by his creator and the monster agrees with Victor's assigning him to a masculine gender, seeing himself as male. Yet his educational situation can be paralleled to that of women, as can his circumstance of being judged by appearances. The latter coincides in an exaggerated manner with the aesthetic criteria that govern the lives of women. Victor's creature has a physique with many characteristics that are drawn from what is considered to be the masculine end of the gender spectrum. He is symbolically masculine in relation to the jagged, icy, rocky, lifeless features of the masculine sublime over which he flows effortlessly and into which he sometimes blends. 

            Someone acknowledged as male would not normally be judged aesthetically to the degree that a woman would. But the fact that the creature's only insurmountable disadvantage is his appearance speaks also about society's aesthetic judgement of women. Wollstonecraft says, "The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams... when the summer of her physical beauty is past and gone." Frankenstein's masculine creature is condemned to an exaggeration of the feminine hell of being judged by personal appearance and being ostracized because of deviation from accepted understandings of beauty. 

            Frankenstein's monster then is an ironic woman. Pleasing features are what women are expected to settle for because if they insist on being equally respected for their minds they are, as Wollstonecraft says, "hunted out of society as ‘masculine’. The creature is also "hunted out of society" because society stops at the surface in judging him just as it does women. The word "masculine" here can be equated with "monster". 

            We are all the creations of the society in which we live and so society for each of us is our own Victor Frankenstein. When Victor begins his autobiography at the beginning of chapter one he says, "I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic." He is essentially saying, "I am society." When one is partially shut out from full participation or inclusion in society because of physiognomy, gender, or many other reasons based on appearance, the excluded victim is seen as a monster. Victor sees his creature as a monster as soon as he is animated because he assesses his character based on appearance. Wollstonecraft says, "to bring into existence a creature... who could think and improve himself" is an "incalculable gift". But Victor refuses responsibility, thereby forcing his creation out into the world before its mind has "been stored with knowledge or strengthened by principles" as Wollstonecraft says of the educational paucity that women experience. In making no effort to understand this creature's positive potential and to help him realize it, Victor excludes him from participation in society, making him a monster, and consequently damning him to a life akin to that of a wild animal. Any society that does this to a thinking creature, Wollstonecraft warns, "can expect to see him at any moment transformed into a ferocious beast. ‘You have loosed the bull" she says "Do you expect that he won’t use his horns?’. 

            Parisa did her presentation and when she was finished I added a tie-in with mine. We had titled our handout, "Society's Control of Nature Creates Monsters." I said it's ironic that Victor talks of having gone against nature by creating the monster when his creature is far more in touch with nature than anyone else. The way he moves so fluidly over the mountains and the arctic is one example. In the Arctic both the monster and Victor acquire dog teams. Victor bought his while the monster would have stolen his. The fact that the dogs would have obeyed the creature despite not knowing him shows his affinity with nature. Accentuating this is the fact that by the time Captain Walton finds Victor only one of his dogs is alive. 

            I asked the question, "Why did Frankenstein want to create a beautiful male?" and we discussed it for a long time. A lot of people had responses. One student offered that he wanted to eliminate women from the reproduction process. 

            Matt said that the monster is perhaps symbolically a mishmash of European cultures. 

            The professor said something about the silken thread that holds families together. 

            She asked why the monster is ugly. I said it is because one can almost see inside of him. Victor describes him as having skin so thin that one can see all of his muscles and veins. I showed a picture of someone with no skin. Ugliness is ironically having no surface or one's surface being inside. 

            Our presentation went well and there was plenty to discuss until the end of class. 

            I said it's ironic that Victor puts the monster together and then the monster takes Victor apart. 

            At the end of the novel the creature says he is going to go to the North Pole and build a bonfire to step into and kill himself. I wondered what he was going to burn to make a bonfire. 

            I also expressed the hope that the monster would run into some Inuit people along the way and actually become accepted into society. 

            I told Parisa, "Good job!" 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought eight bags of grapes and some toilet paper. 

            I weighed 82.9 kilos before lunch at 15:21. I haven't been that light since I bought the digital scale a couple of years ago and probably long before. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 18:00, which is the lightest I've been at that time in eleven days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:13. 

            I weighed 84 kilos at 19:30. 

            I read more of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and have seventeen pages left in the Peter Pan book. The fairies are always busy but they aren't very bright and never really do anything. They have schools but the youngest student is always in charge. They can grant wishes and they granted Peter a wish to go back to his mother but when he got there she was already in bed with another little boy and the window was barred. 

            I had the best parts of three potatoes with gravy while watching season 5, episode 21 of the Beverly Hillbillies. Jethro decides to try computer matchmaking. Granny says "Phooey" but when her attempt to make a love potion for Jed fails she decides to go to the computer place and enter Jed's data.

            When Jethro is there, Linda who takes down his data, finds out that his uncle is worth $68 million and decides to be Jethro's match. Mr. Filbert, who owns the service finds a perfect match for Jed. A woman named Gladys Peabody who is also from back in the hills. Filbert takes Gladys to the Clampett mansion but Jed doesn't know anything about the matchmaking that has been going on. He thinks Gladys is there for Jethro. Jethro is disappointed. Then Linda comes and flirts with Jethro. He wants to be with Linda but he believes in what he thinks is the computer's choice. Then Jed and Gladys sit down to talk and find out they really are a match. Jed tells Jethro and with relief he runs to Linda.

            Meanwhile Jane Hathaway goes to put in Granny's and Elly's data at the computer match place. She decides to also put in her own data but blows a fuse that temporarily shuts out all the power in LA. But she fixes the fuse and Filbert is impressed and they begin dating. They also find matches for Granny and Elly: a handsome old man and a handsome young man. Granny thinks the young one is her match. 

            Linda was played by Warrene Ott, who was a ballerina with the Starlight Opera Company in San Diego. She started doing local theatre in the 1950s and then worked for the USO entertaining the troops. She was in 3000 USO shows. In 1961 she was cast as Betty for a live action Archie TV series called "Life With Archie", having been chosen from 30,000 girls. But the series didn't survive the pilot episode. She died at the age of 51. 

            

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs.