From Plantation to Resort; or, Why Victor Frankenstein Needs a Vacation

Victor Frankenstein is a dromomaniac; he is unable to resist a pathological urge to travel. This forms a central aspect of his character. He shares this trait with his fellow traveler Walton, and more broadly, with the hoard of British tourists who poured onto the continent following the Battle of Waterloo, full of pent-up desire. In this essay, I place Victor’s dromomania in the context of broader historical movements, primarily the development of the plantation-industrial complex which remains a hidden presence within Shelley’s novel. The way picturesque tourism in Shelley’s day occludes the industrial from its representation of the landscape is similar to the way Caribbean tourism today occludes the history of slavery from its own representations. I read the many occlusions on which Frankenstein is structured through this historical erasure of the reality of laboring bodies.