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Main Points of Denise Gigante's article, "Facing the Ugly: The Case of //Frankenstein//":

As the name suggests, this work is about how the ugly is discussed in Mary Shelley's //Frankenstein,// and the following quotes were taken from the article.

**Quotes**:

1) "If it [the ugly] is mentioned at all, it is treated as a negative form of the beautiful: either as a lack of beauty in general or as a gap in the beautiful object." (p. 565)

2) "This via negativa of aesthetic theory, however, will not suffice as a hermeneutic mode to account for the positive ugliness of Mary Shelley's Creature. If the ugly object lacks beauty, the Creature, as the aesthetic object of Frankenstein's "unhallowed arts" (1831; F, 339), functions more actively than lack. He not only fails to please, he emphatically displeases. And in his relation to the subject, Victor Frankenstein, he manifests precisely the opposite of lack: excess." (p. 566)

3) "He [the creature] is, like the blood and guts oozing from the fissures in his skin, an excess of existence, exceeding representation, and hence appearing to others as a chaotic spillage from his own representational shell." (p.566)

4) "It is important to remember that the Creature's ugliness did not bother Victor( or anyone else for that matter) before he came to life: "he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion ..." (F, 87)." (p. 566)

5) "As Victor's experience during the 1790s (when the novel is set) demonstrates, direct exposure of the raw, unaestheticized stuff of humanity (its "Ugly Nakedness") threatens not only the subject itself, but the entire system of symbolicr epresentationt, he disruption of which would constitute the "horrible and disgustful situation" (R, 90)" (p. 568)

6) "Thus while it is couched in admittedly boyish terms, William Frankenstein's fatal encounter with the Creature-"monster! ugly wretch! you wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces" (F, 169)-contains a fundamental insight into the nature of ugliness itself: the ugly is that which threatens to consume and disorder the subject." (p. 569) 7) "Despite the fact that Victor specifically chose each feature for its beauty ("I had selected his features as beautiful"), the combined form cannot aesthetically contain its own existence." (p. 570)

8) "In direct contrast to the Creature's ugly eye, therefore, stands Victor's description of the "fair" Elizabeth: "Her brow was clear and ... her blue eyes cloudless ... none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features" (1831; F, 323).29 Victor's fantasy takes possession of him here and suggests a three-dimensionalityo f the humanb eing, rathert han of the brow or the eye itself. As a result, the merefact of her head, the physical stuff of it, is repressed. Indeed his representation contains her materiality to such a degree that she becomes completely etherealized: she is "heaven-sent" and bears a celestial "stamp." (p. 572)

9) "However the principal factor of sublime experience-being elevated from terror to a comprehension of greatness-is absent from Victor's experience. Instead, he becomes psychologically debased after every encounter with the Creature: a "miserable wretch" (F, 227) like the Creature himself." (p. 575)

10) "After anotherp articularly feverish night on the Orkney islands, he remarks: "when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself' (F, 196)." (p. 575)

11) "He despairs of "brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds," and then demands: "where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; . . . I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I?" (F, 149). Throughout the novel, he continues to complain of his isolation-"No sympathy may I ever find" (F, 244), "I am quite alone" (F, 245), etc.-and the fact that he cannot identify his position in the signifying "chain of existence and events" (F, 174)." (p. 581)

12) "And it is this very "chain of existence," from which the Creature is excluded, that keeps the other characters in the novel in existence-paradoxically, by repressing their "real existence."" (p. 581)