Ruth Franklin writes about Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, childbirth, Queerness and new novels that address them all. “Perhaps this is why the “Frankenstein” story continues to haunt us. If, as parents, we are Victor Frankenstein, then as children we are all his creature. Or, perhaps better, the creature is us: the expression of our most forbidden desires, for sex or violence or revenge, as well as of our deepest fears—abandonment, isolation, unlovability. We may dress in clothes and abide by social compacts, but our bodies know that we are still animals. Even today, as we move ever closer to the boundary between person and machine, sharpening our vision with plastic in our eyes or replacing our joints with steel hardware, the creature lurks, threatening to expose us for what we truly are: imperfect, human, real.” 

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