“Be Men, or Be More Than Men”: Frankenstein, Frankissstein, and Judith Butler

This paper aims to explore two novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein, through the theoretical lens of Judith Butler. Butler’s works used as frameworks are Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Bodies That Matter: on the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993). The two books focus, among other things, on the notions of gender performativity and the body as the most material dimension of sex and sexuality. The main topics analyzed within the scope of this paper are the notions of gender performativity and gender identity, the body, naming, and phallogocentrism. As the older of the two novels and the one that can be considered a part of the canon of English literature, Frankenstein has a stronger presence in both gender and queer studies. It is more analyzed and the questions of gender and body present in the story have been explored in more detail and from more sides. Frankissstein, in turn, also covers a number of the same topics, but often in more explicit ways, and offers a variety of interpretations and elements discussed in gender and queer theory. In the analysis of the two novels, the focus is placed on the presence and representation of gender, how characters stray from the gender binary, or alternatively what place they have in it, what do their bodies constitute, and how do they function with and within them