Abstract
Previous studies have fruitfully applied queer theory to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, mainly by interpreting Victor and his Monster as analogous to gay men. Scholars have convincingly shown that association with monstrosity aligns the Monster, and to some extent his scientist-father, with subalterns abjected from dominant social/symbolic orders. While these interventions provide significant insight into the queer valences of Shelley’s novel, they obscure the monster’s narrative construction as a child. The queer child as conceived in recent child and queer horror studies has yet to be fully explored in regards to Frankenstein. Using Lee Edelman’s No Future as a critical point of departure, this paper seeks to reveal how Frankenstein displaces the logic of reproduction and heteropatriarchal cultural norms by reading the monster as a queer child. I will discuss The Child as a conceptually loaded figural image that haunts both Shelley’s novel and the Romantic movement. By closely examining the text in conjunction with Edelman’s theory of reproductive futurism, we can ascertain how unquestioned heteronormative social orders and the meaning they secure are disturbed through Shelley’s narrative of the Monster’s queer childhood.