Frankissstein

Body parts play a significant role in the physical science of both Frankissstein and Shelley’s original Frankenstein. In Winterson’s work, body parts have a similar symbolic value to Shelley’s, but with critical updates for the modern day. Body parts most frequently come up in discussions of Ron and Victor’s work, with Ron fashioning body parts out of varied materials for sexual use, while Victor experiments on and attempts to reanimate human body parts. In both cases, body parts are a symbol of ethics, reminding the reader of the uneasiness most people feel at the thought of dismembering, reassembling, or dissecting human bodies. Both Ry and Victor have to assure people that they are not grave robbers or murderers when the subject of body parts arises, and this need for justification fits within the scope of common ethics regarding bodies. Because bodies are usually associated with a specific person, such as I.J. Good’s head, they remind people of the connection between mind and body.

In the original Frankenstein, part of the horror of Victor’s work was that he mixed different parts of different people and animals to make a singular, coherent being. In Frankissstein, this same idea applies, but it leans into the existential question of what it means to be a coherent being at all.