Quotation: “If, as these histories show, Foucault’s “hermaphrodite” is a figure whose historicity reflects shifts in concepts of monstrosity, we may well want to understand this figure as including precursors of what have since, over the course of that very history, come to be known and come to emerge as transgender subjects. So, when Freeman writes that Frankenstein’s monster “contains a history of bodies and of bodiliness,” we can read that to mean that this monster contains a history of trans embodiment – and that having a body with an obvious history (of surgery, for instance, of changes in presentation, of gender transgressive embodiment) is construed as a sign of trans monstrosity. The transgender monster preexists transgender as a term. Despite the term’s much more recent specific emergence, then, transgender has long been part of monstrosity’s history and historicity.”-(Koch-Rein, 47).

Comment/Connection: Koch-Rein’s essay explores themes relating to transgender topics in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. The passage above refers to Foucault’s observation that in historical literature, hermaphrodites were seen as monsters, as people who were unintelligible both in the mental and categorical sense. This was, until, the term hermaphrodite was mixed in with the term homosexual, causing the ‘monstrosity of nature’ to become the ‘monstrosity of conduct’. Koch-Rein says, then, that Frankenstein’s monster is a combination of many historical trends  and popular viewpoints regarding transgender behavior during the 1800s. 

This essay and passage specifically made me think of how Shelley never explicitly identified the gender or sexuality of Frankenstein’s monster. It is implied that the monster has a male physique, with broad shoulders and a tall frame, but apart from the description and her use of ‘he/him’ pronouns, there is little evidence as to how the creature identifies. I also thought that when Koch-Rein quoted Freeman by saying, “the monster contains a history of bodies and of bodiliness”, they meant that the monster in Frankenstein is made up of a different variety of people, genders, and beliefs that don’t necessarily fit in the frame that Frankenstein intended. This also explains why Frankenstein was so frightened when he animated the creature. The creature turned out to be something other than what was intended, much like how two parents come together to create a daughter, only to find that their child identifies as male. It was also interesting to hear that Foucault discussed monstrosities of nature and monstrosities of conduct. During the 1800s, I can see how homosexuality was considered a monstrosity of conduct, as it was believed that people had a direct choice of the type of person they were and had relations with. Transgender beliefs, on the other hand, couldn’t be explained, much like how Victor finds his creature to be so unexplainable. Being transgender wasn’t (and still isn’t) a choice that people willingly made, so to describe that feeling as a monstrosity of nature, it alienates and dehumanizes that specific group of people. While it was Victor’s choice to reanimate a body (monstrosity of choice), the product was unintentional, meaning that Victor viewed his creature as a monstrosity of nature rather than a monstrosity of choice. 

Questions: How does a monstrosity of choice fit into Cohen’s theses? When the book was first published, did readers identify Victor’s choice with being monstrous, or was it considered to be simply a mistake or fatal flaw?