He is a Sister: The Monstrous (De)Construction of the Sex/Gender Binary in Iain Banks’
The Wasp Factory
Vikki Winkler
English 498: Honours Thesis
Advisor: Dr. Jodey Castricano
March 31, 2008
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If it is appropriate to define “ideology” as that which constitutes social, cultural, and
political order, then perhaps it can be said that as a genre, the Gothic paradoxically both
challenges and reinforces the stability of these seemingly “fixed” structures and, similarly, that it
both disturbs and reifies what one deems “normal” or “natural” in western industrial society. In
this way, the Gothic functions as both a noun and a verb, and can be equated to Queer Theory in
that it “queers” heteronormative “truth” claims. The Gothic may appear to stabilize the “natural”
order because most novels, and now films, end with the eradication of any “monsters” that have
posed a threat to society. However, it is the appearance of the “monster” in the first place that
gives one pause. One could argue that the Gothic serves as the repository of all that is repudiated
in society as “abnormal,” and, in effect, becomes the binary opposite of what western society
deems intelligible and legitimate. In general, binaries function as ideological absolutes and exist
in pairs that are contingent on one another for their meaning. However, one half of the pair is
usually privileged as the original, “true,” and desirable portion of the pair, and the other half
takes the position of “other,” undesirable, and an aberration of the “original.” Therefore, notions
of what constitutes socio-cultural reality and what constitutes the Gothic depend on this
relationship of terminal opposites. That being said, I will argue that although the Gothic seems to
perform the dual or double function of stabilizing and destabilizing ordered systems, it ultimately
becomes a deconstructive tool that exposes western heteronormative, taxonomic, teleological,
epistemological, and theological systems that operate discursively to construct socio-cultural
“norms.” With such a dual function in mind, I will use the Gothic through Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus as a lens to examine the social, cultural, and
political order of Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory with the aim of deconstructing ideologies
surrounding the “natural” and the manifestation of the Other specifically in regards to a
heteronormative sex/gender system. As a Gothic novel, The Wasp Factory queers or “gothicizes”
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the apparent stability of heteronormativity and the structure of binary oppositions. I will argue
that although the novel appears to subvert sex/gender categories, it ultimately reinforces them
through his main character, Frank Cauldhame. Throughout the novel, Banks shows that the
“obvious” incontestability of sex and gender as two (and only two) possibilities is an outrageous
notion because there are slippages and categorical exceptions at every turn; Frank’s
hypermasculine identity is clouded by “female” biology. However, the novel returns to an
essentialist and/or “biology is destiny” perspective at the novel’s conclusion.
Iain Banks’s novel, The Wasp Factory, written in 1984, grapples in part with the
longstanding essentialist-constructionist debate: Is man/woman born or made? Banks’s main
character, Frank Cauldhame, must come to terms with being socialized as a male even though
s/he1 was born with “female” genitalia. Angus, Frank’s father, is a renegade doctor of
biochemistry who, after his wife leaves him, decides to experiment on Frank with hormone
therapy. Angus creates a bizarre story around the mutilation of Frank’s “male” genitalia by a dog
named Saul. When Frank was born, Angus decided not to register h/er birth. As a result, Frank
grew up without a birth certificate, National Insurance number, or any formal documentation “to
say [he was] alive or [had] ever existed” (Banks 10). Angus Cauldhame keeps Frank in virtual
isolation partially because of the geographic location of their home, and partially because he
chooses to educate Frank himself. Angus is Frank’s source of knowledge – in fact, because
Angus educates Frank at home, he is able to construct/manipulate h/er understanding of the
world and the body s/he inhabits. Frank identifies as masculine, but “he” is “female.” S/he
struggles with feeling emasculated as a result of h/er apparent accident, and commits murder
three times. Frank believes that “both sexes can do one thing specially well; women can give
birth and men can kill…[and] I consider myself an honorary man” (154). Just as Angus
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The use of “s/he” and “h/er” as pronouns in reference to Frank’s character will be discussed later in the paper.
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experiments with the chemical construction sex/gender, Frank experiments with the
psychological construction of masculinity and femininity. The social construction of Frank’s
body as male stands in direct opposition to h/er biological “beginnings” and makes h/er a Gothic
figure, one that destabilizes the “natural” binary sex/gender system, and thereby exposes its
compulsory yet arbitrary nature. Frank’s body troubles the “bounded” sex/gender system because
s/he does not fit neatly into one of the two “intelligible” categories. H/er body also challenges the
constructed masculine and feminine qualities that constitute “the human” because humanness is
recognizable through the binary lens of the heteronormative sex/gender system, and therefore,
“the subject, [even] the speaking ‘I,’ is formed by virtue of having gone through such a process
of assuming a sex” (Butler Bodies 3). However, Judith Butler writes, “perhaps this construct
called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender,
with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at
all” (Gender 9-10). Therefore, the novel illustrates the mimetic relationship between the social
and the biological, and shows how individuals must reinforce the “reality” of his/her sex/gender
through socio-cultural performative acts.
Frank undergoes a rebirth, a re-naming or re-classification of identity as the novel ends.
In Frank’s final reflections s/he says that “our journey,” presumably the journey of life, is “part
chosen, part determined” (Banks 244). I would argue that, in terms of sex/gender, choice is not in
equal parts with determination because “choice” only exists within the binary sex/gender system
of classification. At birth, there are two possibilities for the basis of identity, and one possibility
must be rejected based on the intelligibility of reproductive genitalia. Butler states that “such
attributions or interpellations [in regards to the constitution of ‘male’ and ‘female’ bodies]
contribute to that field of discourse and power that orchestrates, delimits, and sustains that which
qualifies as ‘the human’…[and] of those abjected beings who do not appear properly gendered; it
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is their very humanness that comes into question” (Bodies 8). In Banks’s novel, Frank is not
“properly gendered,” but rather is gender ambiguous and therefore a fitting subject for a gothic
novel. If Frank had not uncovered h/er “true identity,” who would Frank be? Was s/he ever really
a man? Does believing or “feeling” that you are a man/woman make you one? And if not, what
would make you a man/woman? In characteristic Gothic form, the novel raises unsettling
questions for the reader. However, while it appears that Banks is questioning gender norms,
social boundaries, and the arbitrary or “slippery” characteristics that are meant to categorize
men/male and women/female, he ultimately reinscribes heteronormativity and the sex/gender
binary by having Frank (re)claim “womanhood” without question. Why is it necessary for
Frank’s sex/gender to be “resolved” or “dissolved” into one category or the other? On the other
hand, however, the fact that Frank, as a “female,” is capable of “essentialized” male/masculine
behaviour continues to problematize binary categorizations of sex/gender.
In the novel, Frank was born female, but masculinized by the somewhat questionable
experimental scientific genius of h/er father. The experiment ultimately fails when Frank
discovers the “truth” about h/er birth sex; s/he is not a mutilated male but actually a female.
Banks addresses, or perhaps parodies, the discourse of psychoanalysis by way of Frank being a
“castrated” male. By lacking a penis within this system of binaries, Frank is paradoxically a
“woman.” Johnathan Culler notes that psychoanalysis sees women as “not the creature with a
vagina but the creature without a penis, [and] is essentially defined by that lack” (qtd. in
Schoene-Harwood 139). The view that women are merely degenerated men is apparent early on
in the text when Frank comments matter-of-factly, “I hate having to sit down in the toilet all the
time. With my unfortunate disability I usually have to, as though I was a bloody woman” (Banks
14). This quotation solidifies women’s position as both “less evolved” and “disabled” versions of
men. Ironically, Frank fights against the “feminizing” effects of being a mutilated male when, if
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one were to see this situation in Freudian terms, s/he is merely a woman experiencing unresolved
penis envy. Schoene-Harwood argues that “[Angus’] tale of Frank’s accidental castration is
designed to disable woman, to keep her in check by inculcating in her an awesome respect and
envy of the penis” (141). Additionally, it appears that Frank is completely subject to the “law of
the father,” which Barbara Creed describes as a “universe of shame” (13). Frank is constantly
embarrassed and humiliated by h/er “unmanly” body. Schoene-Harwood comments that “the
child’s originally chaotic, intransigent nature is moulded into shape by the Law of the
Father…[and] Frank’s father is shown to wield absolute power over his daughter’s understanding
of the world” (141). However, Frank unabashedly uses the elements of the abject body as a
source of power: “Sometimes, when I have to make precious substances such as toenail cheese or
belly-button fluff, I have to go without a shower or bath for days and days” (Banks 51). Creed
notes that “images of bodily wastes threaten the subject that is already constituted…as ‘whole
and proper’” (13), paradoxically, however, Frank utilizes the abject in order to constitute
h/erself. Creed further argues that the world of the mother, or maternal authority, “point[s] back
to a time…when bodily wastes, while set apart from the body, were not seen as objects of
embarrassment and shame” (13). One could argue that Frank’s character “gothicizes” or queers
the “law of the father” by incorporating the world of the mother, “a universe without shame”
(Creed 13) in regards to the abject body.
The novel’s outcome would seem to support an essentialist point of view because Frank
is not “made” into a man despite chemical and social influence. H/er “femaleness” is simply
repressed by h/er social environment, but ultimately, h/er “true” sex is revealed. It is impossible
to ignore, however, the fact that Frank represents h/erself as male because h/er father labelled
h/er as such. It is reasonable to assume that the development of an individual’s gender identity,
according to Richard Lewontin, “depends on what label is attached to him or her as a child…thus
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biological differences [become] a signal for, rather than the cause of, differentiation in social
roles” (qtd. in Wodak 4). Frank adopts a masculine persona because s/he is identified as or
named male, and is led to believe that the dog, Saul, destroyed h/er “signalling” genitalia. It
could be said that gender, although strongly dependent on sex, paints a more accurate picture of a
person’s identity – allowing for a continuum of characteristics rather than a binary system. If this
is so, then it is important to explore what sex and gender mean in a society of naming.
Names are signs that carry layers of meaning like signifying strands of a web that sprawl
outward from the signified object. The web is flexible, changeable and forever expanding, and its
structure forms the social order in which we exist. We can easily conjure several mental and
sensory associations from one single word, and therefore we do not simply speak or hear names;
we experience them. The spelling of given names is traditionally gendered, or perhaps sexed, to
remove ambiguity as is indicated by the homophones Francis Leslie Cauldhame and Frances
Lesley Cauldhame, the first being the masculine form. Additionally, it is not uncommon to hear
comments like “you don’t look like a Sue,” suggesting that “Sue” is a type and encompasses a
preconceived set of characteristics. We evaluate, situate, demarcate and in extreme
circumstances, eliminate based on the power of names alone. Names are powerful because they
are badges of identification branding us from birth just as “male” and “female” brand us in a
heteronormative society. The very basis of identity stems from the naming of a child’s sex:
“Consider the medical interpellation which…shifts an infant from an ‘it’ to a ‘she’ or a ‘he,’ and
in that naming, the girl is ‘girled,’ brought into the domain of language and kinship through the
interpellation of gender” (Butler, Bodies 7). Throughout the paper I have “named” Frank as
“s/he” or “h/er” in an attempt to both confuse and fuse pronouns. This action, however, could be
interpreted as merely a hyphenation of two sexes or genders that does not remove or alleviate
sexual branding, or it could be interpreted as a hybrid construction or a “neither/nor”
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representation of sex/gender. It is my intention to linguistically confound the “coherent”
sex/gender binary and move towards new identities or signs that leave room for possibilities.
As mentioned briefly before, the concept of “gender” appears to blur the distinct binary
boundaries of “sex,” but it seems impossible, however, to view gender without making reference
to individuals in terms of their masculinity and femininity. Butler argues that “the presumption
of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex
whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it” (Gender 9). Amy Sheldon notes,
“speakers of English don’t ordinarily notice anything peculiar about expressions such as ‘the
opposite sex,’ or ‘the same sex,’ since these reflect shared, cultural beliefs that gender is about
difference, if not dichotomy” (225-26). Sheldon further writes, “critical discussions of gender
theory have pointed out the descriptive inadequacy of theorizing gender as a dichotomy and of
assuming that the categories ‘woman/girl’ and ‘man/boy’ refer to either natural or homogeneous
social categories” (226). Gender identity is so strongly linked to sex that it is also viewed in
binary sets of characteristics. Ruth Wodak argues:
It makes no sense…to assume that there is merely one set of traits that generally
characterizes men and thus defines masculinity; or likewise, that there is one set of traits
for women which defines femininity…[a] unitary model of sexual character is a familiar
part of sexual ideology and serves to reify inequality between men and women in our
society. (3)
While this may be true, Wodak does not account for the “horror” of gender ambiguity – the unnamed. Gender appears to be a fluid social construction, or in other words, ideas about
masculinity and femininity flow on a continuum and exist as such within individuals. Gender,
primarily based on the dichotomy of sex, is problematic because binary opposites are literally
lists of extremes that foster an “either this or that” mentality, and leave no room for degrees.
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Butler also suggests that “sex” is not a fact, but is rather discursively produced in the same way
as gender, if not by gender constructions: “gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is
also the discursive/cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and
established as ‘prediscursive,’ prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts”
(Gender 10). Therefore, discourses surrounding sex are “gendered” just as discourses
surrounding gender are “sexed.” Butler’s deconstruction of sex as a “natural fact” or as
“prediscursive” undermines the binary sex/gender system as a compulsory basis for identity. The
Wasp Factory, however, perpetuates the binary sex/gender system by having Frances Lesley
Cauldhame (a character who is “unquestionably” female by the novel’s end) close the door on
“Frank” and start again. There is no indication at the novel’s close that Frances will continue to
identify in part with masculinity, but instead appears to reject it and embrace h/er “femaleness”
as a “natural” inescapable fact.
In order to (re)construct sex/gender as “natural,” it is imperative that one engages in
sex/gender affirming rituals. Throughout the novel, Frank performs rituals, similar to religious
rites, that s/he has constructed in order to affirm h/er identity: “I held my crotch, closed my eyes
and repeated my secret catechisms. I could recite them automatically, but I tried to think of what
they meant as I repeated them…they still make me shiver whenever I say them, automatic or
not” (Banks 157). Frank’s ritualistic behaviour can be seen to illuminate the ritual or
performative aspect of a sex/gender system, whereby one must “come to believe [in one’s
“assumed” gender] and...perform in the mode of belief” (Butler Gender 192). Frank’s ability to
“automatically” recite h/er “secret catechisms” can be equated with the “naturalization” of
sex/gender and its uncontested existence as “truth.” In order to clarify the performative aspects
of sex/gender, Butler argues:
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[B]ecause gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender,
and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a
construction that regularly conceals its genesis; the tacit collective agreement to
perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is
obscured by the credibility of those productions…the construction ‘compels’ our
belief in its necessity and naturalness. (Gender 190)
Butler shows how the constant repetition or “ritual” performance of sex/gender creates the
illusion of stable sex/gender identities. Frank assumes a masculine gender identity, but constantly
struggles to reaffirm it by creating rituals to suit a body that contests the possibility of becoming
the “ideal” male figure. The subtlest repetitions are reaffirming:
In the bathroom, after a piss, I went through my daily washing ritual. First I had
my shower…[then after] a brisk rub down with a face-cloth and then a towel, I
trimmed my nails…I brushed my teeth thoroughly…Next the shave…the shave
follows a definite and predetermined pattern; I take the same number of strokes of
the same length in the same sequence each morning. (Banks 51-52)
This quotation exemplifies a daily adherence to routine and social practice. Sex and gender are
reaffirmed in the same way; however, affirmation and reaffirmation are fruitless in a system that
is arbitrary. Individuals circulate around the anxiety of striving to sustain impossible norms, and
therefore must constantly constitute themselves as “credible” representatives. Butler argues that,
fundamentally, gender is a binary system merely based on a binary “male/female” sex system —
the two are inextricably linked. Any discourse around gender is already “sexed” and any
discourse around sex is already “gendered.” The western world has built itself on the anatomical
and philosophical surety of “male” and “female,” and boldly wields the metaphysical measuring
stick of power and knowledge in order to establish these categories as foundational and
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originary. Butler quotes Mary Douglas in regards to the human body: “[T]he body is a model
that can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are
threatened and precarious” (Gender 180). The body becomes the site of political struggle as it
strains under the weight of socio-cultural pressure to conform to “naturalized” ways of knowing
and being.
Butler argues that it is repetition that can either affirm or deny the “natural.” She suggests
that “the subject is not determined by the rules through which it is generated because
signification is not a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition that both conceals
itself and enforces its rules precisely through the production of substantializing effects” (Gender
198). Therefore, the process of repetition, either discursive or physical, has the effect of
naturalization and empowerment. In the novel, Frank engages in ritual sacrifice to create a
boundary between the mainland and the island that s/he inhabits. It is h/er routine to attach
various parts (mainly heads) of various creatures to h/er “Sacrifice Poles.” To Frank, the Poles
are symbolic of a “warning system and deterrent all rolled into one…[or a] clenched and
threatening fist” (Banks 5). Mary Douglas suggests that “separating, purifying, demarcating and
punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy
experience” (qtd. in Butler, Gender 178). In other words, both repetition and the exaggeration
and enforcement of arbitrary boundaries are necessary to create the “natural.”
For centuries, female bodies have been described in terms of male bodies, if not as male
bodies. Perhaps the most common link between the evolving descriptions and characterizations
of the female body is that it has been/is lacking the component parts that would make it complete
or human, or more bluntly, male. Thomas Laqueur cites the work of Galen, a second century
anatomist, wherein women’s reproductive organs are described as lacking proper placement and
formation due to a lack of vital heat: “Now just as mankind is the most perfect of all animals, so
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within mankind the man is more perfect than the woman, and the reason for his perfection is his
excess of heat, for heat is Nature’s primary instrument” (qtd. in Laqueur 28). In this regard,
women lacked the necessary “vital heat” during the gestation period to produce a fully formed
male: “those that have the strictest searchers been, / Find women are but men turned outside in”
(qtd. in Laqueur 4). According to Laqueur, the “one-sex model,” or the idea that the male body
constituted the body and gender differences were the result of cultural politics and/or philosophy,
permeated Western European ideology from around the 2nd century to the 18th century.
Gradually, the popular model shifted to one where women were recognized as fundamentally
different creatures, not only physically but “in every conceivable aspect of body…soul…and
moral[ity]” (5). The illumination of these perceived differences showed the human male and
female species as being in contrast to each other  stark opposites with little means of
understanding one another and having little or nothing in common. Also, this opposition sets up
woman as Other and essentially continues to define men as the original, natural or “true” sex, a
stance that is gothically voiced through Frank.
Ironically, Frank’s female body is a constant threat to h/er masculine identity. Frank
describes this tension: “[Angus] started dosing me with male hormones, and has been ever since
[the accident]…what I’ve always thought was the stump of a penis is really an enlarged
clitoris…he has kept tampons for the last few years, just in case my own hormones got the better
of the ones he had been pumping me with” (Banks 240). It seems that in order to secure Frank’s
“ascent” to “manhood,” Frank’s father, Angus Cauldhame, encouraged the loathing of all things
feminine or “female.” It was imperative for Frank to develop an unwavering, fixed notion of
masculine identity, one that perceived the feminine as opposite and distant. Frank is completely
isolated from any female influence except Mrs. Clamp who cleans the house and delivers
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groceries once a week. Frank describes her as “ancient, and sexless the way the very old and the
very young are,” and goes on to suggest, however, that “she’s still been a woman” (51). Amongst
h/er rantings of disgust, Frank exposes the prescribed limits of sexuality. Within a
heteronormative paradigm, the young procreative feminine body is the epitome of sexuality, and
corresponds directly to young masculine virility. Within heteronormativity, youth is touted as
essential to sexuality; therefore, as bodies age, they appear to lose their masculine and feminine
qualities. This suggests that these categories are manufactured to reaffirm heterosexual
procreative norms. Masculinity and femininity become categorical voids when used to describe
elderly bodies. The sex/gender system is inadequate and exclusionary in this context. Frank does
not possess an elderly body, but s/he is relegated to a state of comparative sexlessness by virtue
of possessing a body that does not fit procreative norms. Women repulse Frank for two reasons:
because women exist in opposition to men, and are therefore the enemy of Frank’s masculinity,
and because women are representative of procreativity and a sexuality that are seemingly out of
reach or largely unknown to Frank. Ironically, Frank takes an aggressive “sexist” stance.
Frank unwittingly exposes the fragility of sex/gender categories by characterizing h/er
older brother, Eric, as “weak and sensitive,” or stereotypically feminine. Eric plans to become a
doctor but experiences a traumatizing incident while helping out at a teaching hospital in
Glasgow. He helped care for babies and young children who were severely deformed and
disabled. Frank reveals the nature of Eric’s “unpleasant experience” on a hot July evening:
The child he was attending to was more or less a vegetable…[Eric] saw
something, something like a movement, barely visible on the shaved head of the
slightly smiling child…He bent closer to the skull of the child…[and] looked
round the edge of the metal skull-cap the child wore, thought he saw something
under it, and lifted it easily from the head of the infant…Flies had got into the
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ward…[and] had got underneath the stainless steel of the child’s skull cap and
deposited eggs there…What Eric saw…was the slowly writhing nest of fat
maggots, swimming in their combined digestive juices as they consumed the brain
of the child. (Banks 185-188)
Shortly after Eric’s “unpleasant experience,” he began drinking and starting fights, and
eventually quit school. He also began trying to force children to eat handfuls of worms and
maggots, and started setting fire to dogs. In response to Eric’s “breakdown,” Frank suggests that
Eric is weak, much like a woman:
Whatever disintegrated in Eric then, it was a weakness, a fundamental flaw that a
real man should not have had. Women, I know from watching hundreds—maybe
thousands—of films and television programmes, cannot withstand really major
things happening to them; they get raped, or their loved one dies, and they go to
pieces, go crazy and commit suicide, or just pine away until they die. Of course, I
realise that not all of them will react that way, but obviously it’s the rule, and the
ones who don’t obey it are in the minority. (Banks 195)
Frank’s reflections are “gothically” ironic. S/he suggests that Eric is not a “real man” because he
could not cope with a traumatic experience. Frank’s characterization of Eric and of women
illustrates the impossibility of the categories of “men” and “women” as separate, distinct entities.
In order for Eric to be a “real man,” he must be emotionless and impenetrable. To Frank, Eric’s
“gender performance” is the antithesis of the masculine ideal. However, the irony lays in the fact
that Frank’s “gender performance,” in h/er own terms, is the antithesis of the feminine ideal. In
part, Frank unconsciously subverts the notion that biology “signals” gender. Butler argues that
sex and gender are conflated because there are only two “choices” available, and that gender is
always already “sexed.” Frank and Eric exemplify, however, that within the dichotomous
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construct of sex/gender, genitalia and gender are not necessarily indicative of one another, and
that the constructs of male and female do not account for slippages. If Eric’s behaviour demotes
him from “manhood,” can he redeem his identity, and if not, who can he be now? If he is not a
“real man,” is he a woman? It becomes clear that sex/gender categories are “monstrous” in that
they claim fixity, but offer only ambiguity.
The Monstrous Body
David E. Musselwhite suggests that “[t]he Monster is not ‘in itself’ monstrous, [and]
there is no inherent monstrousness; monstrousness is that which is prescribed and proscribed by
the facile categorizings of the social and cultural order” (59). The body is the site of social,
cultural, and political construction. Bodies are constructed, inscribed, described, raced, gendered,
appropriated, desired, and loathed. It does not seem surprising then that in a heteronormative
society, some bodies are monstrous figures, or at least misrepresented as such. Monsters are
socio-cultural manifestations of anxiety, and therefore must be scorned and/or eradicated. Jeffrey
Jerome Cohen argues that “[t]his anxiety manifests itself symptomatically as a cultural
fascination with monsters—a fixation that is born of the twin desire to name that which is
difficult to apprehend and to domesticate (and therefore disempower) that which threatens”
(viii). Cohen suggests that society harnesses its anxiety within the figure of the monster – names
it as such – and therefore creates an identity that is seemingly distinct from “self,” or the
perception of normalcy. Once society harnesses its anxieties in the figure of a monster, a being
separate from the societal “normal self,” it can act upon the monster and attempt to destroy it.
Destruction of the monster, however, is problematic. It entails denying the monster’s origins, or
derivation, as firmly grounded in “normal” society’s own culture. The monster is both a product
of society’s norms, and an embodiment of all that society excludes to sustain itself as normal, and
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natural. If the monster did not provide one half of the binary pair, the ideological framework of
norms would collapse. Because constructed norms are dependent on constructed monstrosities,
the complete eradication of monsters is impossible. Musselwhite opposes Cohen’s assessment of
“naming the monster.” Instead, he argues:
The Monster is all that a society refuses to name, refuses even to make nameable,
not just because its very heterogeneity, mobility, and power is a threat to that
society but, much more importantly, it is the very flux of energy that made society
possible in the first place and as such offers the terrible promise that other
societies are possible, other knowledges, other histories, other sexualities. (59)
As Musselwhite comments, the Monster makes visible the possibility of “other” societies,
knowledges, histories, and sexualities. However, Musselwhite’s argument stems from the notion
of “degeneration from within” rather than a rejection of Other as external to the self and society.
If the monster is born from within society or self, then it does not form a complete opposite or
binary to the “norm.” In fact, the “norm” is merely a sublimation of “monstrosity,” and is a
means of constructing difference to reinforce hierarchical power structures.
David Punter describes Frank as a “seventeen-year-old monster” (168), but what makes
Frank monstrous? Aside from the ambiguity of h/er sex/gender, Frank’s behaviour in regards to
the killing of animals and people creates a daunting and unsettling character for the reader.
Schoene-Harwood suggests that “[Frank’s] sense of self is warped, virtually beyond repair…[and
s/he] appears as a manufactured, entirely fictitious creation, obsessively overcompensating for a
patriarchally inflicted lack of natural manliness by pursuing an extremist ideal of violent
masculine perfection” (133). Schoene-Harwood attributes Frank’s violent behaviour to h/er “lack
of natural manliness,” and h/er inability to become the “naturalized” male ideal. I would argue,
however, that Frank’s ability to kill despite h/er “femaleness” is largely what makes h/er
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monstrous for the reader. Perhaps readers are doubly shocked by the horror of the murders and
violence when they realize that Frank was born “female” because western culture does not
attribute such abilities and characteristics to female bodies. The novel, therefore, creates Frank as
monster on three levels: First, s/he is presented as a mutilated male, or someone who cannot be
“tidily” categorized; second, s/he commits heinous crimes against people and animals, and
engages in bizarre ritualistic behaviour; and third, s/he is revealed to be female. The reader is led
to believe that Frank’s monstrosity lies in h/er “warped sense of self,” but in actuality, Frank’s
monstrosity lies in the reader’s assumptions about h/er sex/gender.
Arguably, the most famous monster is Frankenstein, or more accurately, Dr. Victor
Frankenstein’s “monstrous” creation. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein; or,
The Modern Prometheus, tells the tale of science gone awry because it operates in opposition to
“nature.” Dr. Frankenstein reminds the reader that “[he] is not recording the vision of a madman”
(35), yet one is acutely aware that perhaps that is exactly the case. Dr. Frankenstein reveals his
“nature-opposing” genius thusly: “After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I
succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of
bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (35). Therefore, Dr. Frankenstein becomes capable of
disrupting the “natural” order of life and death, and is theoretically able to construct a live human
being (although arguably, “humanity” and the “human” are assumed to be living bodies –
inanimate bodies are excluded from the realm of “humanity”) from various non-living (both
human and animal) tissues and structures. Frank’s father, Angus, also fulfills the “mad scientist”
archetype because he disturbs the “natural” order of things by attempting to transform his
daughter into a son. Frankenstein was written around 1817, and thus reflects anxieties
surrounding the early evolutionary meditations of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s
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grandfather, whereas The Wasp Factory (1984) exposes contemporary anxieties surrounding
sex/gender ambiguity in a system of compulsory heteronormativity.
Perhaps it is the metamorphosis or alteration of an “original” body that creates an
uncanny experience for the reader of Banks’ novel. In Powers of Horror: An Essay On
Abjection, Julia Kristeva comments, “[o]n close inspection, all [horror] literature is probably a
version of the apocalypse that seems to me rooted, no matter what its socio-historical conditions
might be, on the fragile border…where identities (subject/object, etc.) do not exist or only barely
so—double, fuzzy, heterogeneous, animal, metamorphosed, altered, abject” (207). The concepts
of “origin” and “original” are reproduced by both religious and evolutionary discourses in order,
one might argue, to stabilize western ontology. However, Kelly Hurley argues that “the narrative
of Darwinian evolution could be read as a supernaturalist or Gothic one: evolution theory
described a bodily metamorphosis which, even though taking place over aeons and over multiple
bodies, rendered the identity of the human body in a most basic sense – its distinctness from the
‘brute beasts’ – unstable” (56).2 Therefore, as Darwinian evolutionary theory sought to establish
the “beginnings” of humanity, it simultaneously blurred the boundaries between human and
animal and disturbed the validity of the “human” category as distinct and separate. Ultimately,
the notion of stable body is a mirage that, in a desire to quench our thirst for concrete knowledge,
draws us towards the miraculous promise of simplicity in the form of binary oppositions and
knowable, nameable, classifiable solutions.
The act of naming or classifying is a source of power and a means of control. Everything
that Frank knows and understands about h/er existence came from h/er father or from the media.
Angus manipulates knowledge to maintain control over Frank: “‘What height is this table?’
“Brute beasts” included animals and colonized peoples, and the collapse of these distinctions was horrific to the
colonizers.
2
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[Angus] said suddenly…‘Thirty inches,’ I told him…‘Wrong,’ he said with an eager grin. ‘Two
foot six’” (Banks 6). This exchange exemplifies the arbitrariness of what is deemed “correct,”
and applies more broadly to the arbitrariness of what we know to be “true.” The measurements
amount to the same length, but the “truth” lies within the difference of their linguistic
(discursive) expression. Frank must constantly negotiate and adapt h/er knowledge to suit h/er
father’s idiosyncratic knowledge set. Even though Frank is able to invalidate some of h/er
father’s claims when s/he gains access to the library, s/he exists within Angus’ paradigm.
Foucault argues: “Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one
holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay
of nonegalitarian and mobile relations” (94). In this way, Angus’ merely (re)categorizes Frank as
male, administers hormones, and facilitates Frank’s socialization into masculinity through the
powerful, well-established sex/gender system.
Judith Butler states, “the naming [of a child as either a boy or a girl] is at once the setting
of a boundary, and also the repeated inculcation of a norm” (Bodies 8). This is a critical point in
terms of Frank’s character. Frank believes s/he is abnormal because s/he was “named” male by
h/er father. The act of naming Frank “male” confined h/er identity, or sense of self, to the
definitions associated with masculinity, however, because Saul the dog mauled h/er genitalia,
s/he was plagued by “unmasculine” associations. It is a false authority that reiterates Frank’s
“founding interpellation” (Bodies 8), or being named a boy, and the combined inevitable process,
in Butler’s terms, of “boying the boy” (8). Frank expresses h/er maleness through a series of
uncanny ritualistic behaviours that replace scripted, or accepted masculine performative
measures. Frank says: “[Men] strike out, push through, thrust and take. The fact that it is only an
analogue of all this sexual terminology I am capable of does not discourage me. I can feel it in
my bones, in my uncastrated genes” (154-55). Although Frank’s character is not constructed as
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“genetically” male, s/he has been hormonally and socially modified to identify with a mediaconstructed ideal of “maleness” that s/he can “feel in [h/er] bones.” It would be erroneous to
discount or invalidate Frank’s perception of h/erself because it is built on h/er experience of the
world, and despite not being biologically male, s/he identifies as one. Alice Domurat Dreger
writes: “Imagine saying that you are female only because you have ovaries, or male only because
you have testicles—no matter what the rest of your body or experiences were like…two French
physicians writing on [this] enigmatic problem noted in 1911, ‘the possession of a [single] sex is
a necessity of our social order” (130-131). These observations also draw attention to the
categorical power of biology as seemingly fixed and wholly determinant of gender. Frank
suggests that we can “feel” our biology or genetics, and that we are empowered by the surety and
clarity of these dichotomous divisions. Based on the sex/gender dichotomy, it is gothically ironic
that Frank experiences “male” biological “feelings.” Frank’s psychological experience of h/er
sex/gender exemplifies the power of classifying or naming and the socio-cultural investment we
make in sex/gender categories.
Although Frank Cauldhame is “named,” h/er name does not appear in any legal record,
and as a result, deems h/er essentially non-existent. S/he eventually comes to discover that h/er
name is a gendered fiction. Systems of naming and classification result in the addition of objects
into a scope of intelligibility. Frank names things to distinguish them as important objects: “I sat
and looked at my trowel, Stoutstroke…I stroked the long handle of the trowel, wondering if my
father had a name for that stick of his. I doubted it. He doesn’t attach the same importance to
them as I do. I know they are important” (Banks 12-13). The parallel Frank makes between
Stoutstroke and his father’s “stick” is both humorous and telling. It reinforces Banks’ parody of
psychoanalysis in terms of penis envy, and in the fact that h/er father “possesses” a penis and
does not “attach the same importance” to it as Frank does. In other words, phallocentrism is
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unremarkable, “normal,” and goes-without-saying; Frank is forced to acknowledge the phallus as
important because of h/er marginal status in relation to it. Additionally, by naming h/er trowel,
Frank infuses an inanimate object with a power of its own: “Stoutstroke dipped and bit and sliced
and dug, building a huge triple-deck dam” (25). For Frank, naming is a form of creation, a way
of giving life and significance. In contrast, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster remains nameless
throughout Shelley’s novel (although is more recently referred to as Frankenstein, perhaps as a
gesture towards “domestication” of the monster or a patronymic reference), and is rather referred
to as “daemon” or “creature.” Perhaps Dr. Frankenstein does not name his creation because he
cannot bear to imbue the “monster” with any sense of legitimacy or relationship to him.
As a male, Frank’s mutilated genitalia suggests a figure less than a man, yet not a
woman. This liminality appears to be the source of Frank’s monstrousness, but perhaps it is the
illusion of the possibility of a coherent or unified sex/gender that is truly monstrous. Frank’s
body exists somewhere in between the binary coded bodies – s/he is not either/or, but rather
both/and. One could argue that biological sex determines a person’s over-arching gender
identity, or that gender identity is a consequence of one’s sex. However, this is a gross
oversimplification. Frank’s gender identity is based on h/er perception of h/er biological sex. In
regards to the notion of determining one’s “true sex” within the binary sex/gender system,
Dreger argues, “every body that slid[es] through the divisions weaken[s] those boundaries. If
strict sex borders [are] to be maintained in the culture, sex [has] to be maintained and controlled
in the surgical clinics and in the anatomy museums and in every body” (144-145). Dreger’s
argument points to the fundamental “unnaturalness” of an otherwise “naturalized” or
“normalized” system. Butler discusses the implementation of nature in regards to intersexed or
transsexual individuals:
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[T]he ‘nature’ that the endocrinologists defend…needs a certain assistance
through surgical and hormonal means, at which point a certain nonnatural
intervention in anatomy and biology is precisely what is mandated by
nature…Malleability is, as it were, violently imposed. And naturalness is
artificially induced. (Undoing 66)
Therefore, the so-called “natural” social order must be reinforced by artificial means in order to
reconstitute “male” and “female” as the original, natural, and normal categories for human
beings. Through Dreger and Butler’s insights, it becomes apparent that notions of completeness,
wholeness, and unity are in place to regulate fictive norms. Frank’s body is not monstrous – the
social order that seeks affirmation through the legitimizing and de-legitimizing of bodies is
monstrous.
In his discussion of Frankenstein, Musselwhite suggests that the monster is a
feminine/masculine composite, which “transcends gender” (60). I would argue, however, that the
monster does not transcend gender, but rather resides in the realm of ambiguity. For readers of
Frankenstein and The Wasp Factory, it is more uncanny if the “monstrous” subject breaches, if
only slightly, gender norms. Butler argues that “of those abjected beings who do not appear
properly gendered; it is their very humanness that comes into question” (Bodies 8). Therefore,
for contemporary readers, Frank’s monstrousness resides in the uncanny fact that s/he does not
express gender “correctly,” and that s/he is not aware of h/er “proper” sexual identity.
Throughout The Wasp Factory, Banks seems to be challenging gender stereotypes by taking a
constructionist stance with his characters. At the end of the novel, Banks hints at the possibility
of multiple identities over one lifetime through Frank’s narration: “Our destination is the same in
the end, but our journey – part chosen, part determined – is different for us all, and changes even
as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still
23
crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins” (244). As the quotation
suggests, it seems that Frank’s identity is in a sort of “inter-gendered” state, possibly waiting for
h/er sexual ambiguity to be fully dissolved into one of the possible two genders. However, is
Frank waiting for sex/gender resolution, or is the reader? Is it possible to imagine a world of
many genders or hybrid identities? In the end, the novel returns to a dualistic biological
determinism. Frank discovers that s/he was born with female genitalia, and thus embraces h/er
“true” simplified identity. It is, however, an uncomfortable resolution because it exposes our
belief in and adherence to a sex/gender system that is destructive of all who seek to represent it
as incontestable “truth.”
There is an important connection between nineteenth century fears and theories of
degenerationism and twentieth century fears and theories regarding disability. Injury and
disability can be viewed as a sort of degeneration of the human body – less able bodies are
characterized as less human because they cannot fulfill the constructed ideals of what constitutes
the human. When I write of disability as a social construction, I am referring to Susan Wendell’s
1996 article “The Social Construction of Disability” wherein she argues, “ the distinction
between the biological reality of a disability and the social construction of a disability cannot be
made sharply, because the biological and the social are interactive in creating disability” (23).
Just as disability is partly a social construction, ability is even more suspect in this regard. A
particular form of ability is idealized or normalized, and as a result, the western industrial world
is structured to accommodate those who most closely reflect the able-bodied ideal, or as Wendell
describes them, “paradigm citizens.” Evolution was/is seen as a progressive process in many
instances, which left/leaves room for speculation and anxiety about the regression of the human
species. Degeneration shows itself, in the twentieth century and today, as a loss of identity, or
more specifically, a loss of gender identity. Gender ambiguity calls into question the very
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humanness of the body because of its unintelligibility in a system that appears to operate in
equational terms of male/masculine and female/feminine. In effect, a body that is not sexed or
gendered as specifically male/masculine or female/feminine is a disabled body within the
heteronormative paradigm.
In regards to intersexuality, Judith Butler asks: “what, given the contemporary order of
being, can I be?” (Undoing 58). Butler is demonstrating the impossibility of “being” outside of
male and female, yet numerous individuals are born with variations and combinations of male
and female reproductive organs. Why must intersexed individuals conform to an arbitrary binary
sex/gender system? We are socialized to “match” our gender to our genitalia, and as a result, we
force intersexed persons to choose to “be” either male or female. Intersexuals are viewed as
aberrations and deviants who must be hormonally and surgically “normalized.” In other words,
they are sexually “disabled” bodies who need “corrective surgery” in order to become intelligible
members of society. Butler argues that “naturalness is artificially induced…in the name of
normalization…[and] nature” (Undoing 66). In Banks’ novel, the protagonist exposes the
uncompromising nature of sex/gender. At the end of the novel, Frank/Frances never thinks to
question the validity of claiming “I’m a woman” (241). S/he does not even consider the
possibility of “being” something or someone other than man/male or woman/female, but what
other “choices” are there?
When one first reads The Wasp Factory, perhaps initially we are able to psychologically
justify Frank’s disturbing and malicious actions because of h/er “accident,” and perceive h/er as
a unique or rare case  an angry young man lashing out in reaction to a “freak” emasculation.
Frank h/erself attempts to justify h/er actions in these terms: “I believe that I decided if I could
never become a man, I – the unmanned – would out-man those around me, and so I became the
25
killer…Perhaps I murdered for revenge in each case…through the only potency at my
command” (242-43). We are awed and horrified by h/er self-serving rationalizations regarding
the “special talents” inherent to each sex: “women can give birth and men can kill” (154), but in
the end we find an ironic twist in that all along a woman does the killing. The reader is led into
an essentialist trap at this point. Is this unsettling because Frank’s ideologies about men and
women are not that far off from our own? Is it the raw “truth” in the mouth of a “madwo/man”
that makes it uncanny? Perhaps Frank is merely reflecting the culturally-driven and mediaenforced generalized stereotypes that we adamantly resist acknowledging in ourselves, but force
on others as a means of quick, thoughtless, time-saving identification. Bank’s novel “works”
because we subscribe, on some level, to sex/gender stereotypes.
The misogynistic attitudes and gender stereotypes that run rampant throughout Frank’s
narrative gothicize or queer the reading of the novel. Again, the novel “works” because the
reader is aware or knowledgeable of the claims and accusations Frank makes. Frank openly
discusses the fact that he views women as one of h/er “greatest enemies” and claims that s/he
hates them because “they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing
compared to them” (50). In the process of “lessening – perhaps removing entirely – the influence
of the female” (240), Angus fosters Frank’s development of an extremely negative, but not
unfamiliar, attitude towards women. Frank views women as uncanny creatures, or creatures to be
feared and hated. In another sense, Frank completely rejects the feminine in order to bolster h/er
own damaged masculinity. Butler comments that “the subject, the speaking ‘I,’ is formed by
virtue of having gone through such a process of assuming a sex…[this process] enables certain
sexed identifications and forecloses and/or disavows other identifications” (Bodies 3). In this
way, Frank excludes and rejects any characteristics s/he perceives as feminine either in h/erself
or in others. For example, s/he says of h/er brother that “[Eric] cried like a girl” (43), and
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“whatever disintegrated in Eric then, it was a weakness, a fundamental flaw that a real man
should not have had” (195). Frank also notes that in order for women to be strong or valuable
they must have “more man in their character than most” (195). Interestingly, s/he recognizes a
gender continuum, one where individuals possess both stereotypically masculine (strong,
emotionless, rational) and feminine (weak, emotional, irrational) characteristics, but degrades the
feminine: “I suspect that Eric was the victim of a self with just a little too much woman in it”
(195). Frank’s misogynistic attitude is a reminder of the two-sex model, which defines women in
terms of men, and therefore portrays the female as a flawed or under-developed creature. The
misogynistic attitude Banks attaches to Frank’s character, who is biologically female, is ironic
and perhaps verging on satirical, but it is soberly reflective of the self-loathing females
experience in a society where males have historically constituted the ideal.
The Gothic Lens: Visibility and “Looking”
Early in the novel, Frank watches Officer Diggs cross the bridge from the mainland to the
island. Frank is nestled amongst the dunes on the island and thinks to h/erself, “He didn’t see me,
because I was too well hidden” (Banks 2). This line is particularly significant because it hints at
the obscurity of Frank’s sex/gender. Frank is not only hidden from the public eye, but also from
the distinguishing characteristics of the masculine/feminine sex/gender system. Frank does not fit
neatly into either category and is therefore unintelligible, hidden, or impossible to “see” in a
western socio-cultural framework or context. Sex/gender categories are constructed to simplify
the western worldview. Bodies are divided “neatly” into procreative pairs in order to give the
appearance of clear, perceptible, infallible norms. Sally Haslanger comments:
[O]ur everyday framework for thinking about human beings is structured by the
assumptions that there are two (and only two) sexes, and that every human is
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either a male or a female…Intersexed bodies are eclipsed in our everyday
framework…Whose interests are served, if anyone’s by the intersexed being
ignored in the dominant conceptual framework? (17)
Visibility is often associated with “truth.” If we cannot “see” something conceptually or
physically, then it becomes a fallacy that is either dismissed or ignored. Butler argues:
“Physical features” appear to be in some sense there on the far side of language,
unmarked by a social system…[however], features gain social meaning and
unification through their articulation…As both discursive and perceptual, ‘sex’
denotes an historically contingent epistemic regime, a language that forms
perception by forcibly shaping the interrelationships through which physical
bodies are perceived. (Gender 155)
Frank’s body challenges the binary sex/gender system in that it is discursively and physically
imperceptible. Most bodies do not fit entirely into either the masculine or the feminine. The
psychological, emotional, and physical traits attributed to one gender or the other are fluid and
changeable, and exist on a continuum rather than in a fixed pair; however, we generally dismiss
those things that do not cohere the simplistic binary vision of masculinity and femininity.
Frank is subject to the same western socio-cultural conceptual framework as those
persons who fit more tightly into the constructed norms. Frank’s frustration, anger, and
confusion are the result of h/er inability to become the idyllic male figure: “I want to look dark
and menacing; the way I ought to look, the way I should look, the way I might have looked if I
hadn’t had my little accident” (Banks 19-20). Monique Wittig suggests that “what we believe to
be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an
‘imaginary formation,’ which reinterprets physical features…through the network of
relationships in which they are perceived” (qtd. in Butler, Gender 155). Therefore, Frank’s
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“condition” of physical being, or lack of a hyper-masculine physique, is attributed to an accident,
a disfiguring accident that leaves h/er in a seemingly sexless state. However, Frank’s “condition”
reflects a larger socio-cultural issue that discursively coerces individuals to strive for the ideal
masculine or feminine procreative body. Frank’s desire to be “dark and menacing” also points to
the changeability of ideal body types and to the variability of individual idealism. Foucault
argues that “where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this
resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History 95). Therefore,
Frank’s resistance lies in the fact that s/he does not fulfill the imagined ideal male body, and yet
s/he somehow exists inside the realm of masculinity. At the same time, Frank’s desire to fulfill
the ideal places h/er simultaneously in a position of resistance and reinforcement.
Through Frank’s haunting narration, Banks uses blatant sex/gender stereotypes out of
their “gendered” context. First, Frank describes h/er father as having a “delicate face, like a
woman’s” (5), and after charging Eric with crying “like a girl,” he goes on to describe him as
being “sentimental” and “sensitive” (43). By describing “men” with stereotypically feminine
descriptors, Frank intends to be insulting, but instead s/he unknowingly exposes the impossibility
of “tidy” sex/gender classification. At the end of the novel Frank, as Frances, recognizes that s/he
will never be an “attractive” woman (241). Although it is a subtle statement, it is virulently
encoded with stereotypical thought. It implies that attractiveness is a primary concern for
women, but was of little importance to Frank when s/he thought s/he was a man. Frank strives to
be the closest thing to the masculine ideal: “the killer, a small image of the ruthless soldier-hero
almost all [that he’d] ever seen or read…pay strict homage to” (243). Also, s/he says that if s/he
had not been castrated, s/he might have been “a tall slim man, strong and determined…making
his way in the world, assured and purposeful” (57). All of these comments reinforce men as a
type, “the harder sex” (154), virtually invincible and commanding, opposite to women, and
29
simply better. They also reinforce the fact that masculinity is based solely on the penis. Frank
admits that these ideas stem from what s/he has seen (on TV) and read, but s/he seems ultimately
unaware that h/er schemas are based largely on the manufactured ideals of unrealistic extremes,
and that these representations are designed to keep us dissatisfied with ourselves so we will
consume and acquire products that bring us temporarily closer to the ideal. Frank immerses
h/erself in war games, weaponry, and ritual in order to “masculinize” h/erself by association, and
in order gain credibility and legitimacy as “male.” Butler argues that “gender is not a fact, the
various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender
at all” (Gender 190). Again, repetition is the legitimizing force within the binary sex/gender
system.
Conclusions
The Gothic, both as a verb and a noun, functions to “queer” socio-cultural norms, and
therefore undermines the validity of the norms in the first place. Frank’s body queers the concept
of gender as dual fixed entities, and somehow exists in a liminal space where definition and
classification are problematic or almost impossible. The Gothic bends, flexes, and reacts to
socio-cultural norms, but never dissolves into them because the Gothic subject will not be easily
incorporated within that system of knowledge. Just as Michel Foucault seeks to uncover “the
way sex is ‘put into discourse’…[by way of] the ‘polymorphous techniques of power’” (History
11), I have examined the ways in which the body, or its representation in the Gothic, symbolizes
these power structures, and yet betrays the ideal “ordered” body through its noncompliance,
while at the same time illustrating that all bodies are “ordered” within a “naturalized”
heteronormative system.
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The Gothic genre is notorious for testing borders and beliefs, and addresses the subjects
or objects of cultural anxiety. We fear the unknown, so perhaps being unable to identify an
individual as either male or female is, in Freud’s terms, unheimlich, and therefore disconcerting.
Banks forces the reader to re-examine the entire novel because the end reveals Frank to be
female instead of male. This information drives a re-reading of key points in order to place the
narration in a new context. Because the character “changes” sex (perhaps a metaphorical sexchange?), the meaning shifts and we must struggle to comprehend what that denotes and
connotes. We are unnerved by the fact that we are not able to categorize Frank beyond that of
“monster,” and thereby attach a preconceived web of sex/gender schemas to h/er. It seems that
whoever or whatever is perceptibly unintelligible in Gothic fiction, becomes the monster. Frank
is unintelligible in a dichotomous sex/gender society, so we must therefore disregard the
ambiguously “sexed” because they are beyond clear comprehension, or eradicate the ambiguity
through the violent imposition of the “natural” (Butler, Undoing 66). Perhaps that is why Banks
ends the novel conservatively – leaving the reader to believe that Frank will embrace femininity
and reject masculinity – because there cannot be a satisfying resolution in the possibility of a
person living as both genders, or somewhere in between. It is also possible, however, that Banks
is satirizing the sex/gender system by having Frank claim: “I am a woman.” Perhaps readers are
meant to reject the simplistic ending that they are given, and recognize complexities and
ambiguities that the sex/gender system must ignore in all bodies in order to establish itself as an
inherent and “natural” way to divide and socialize them.
Frankenstein’s creature is both life in death and death in life, and Frank is both man in
woman and woman in man. This blending of binaries, however, is not enough. The ability to be
two or “double” leads to the possibility of multiple simultaneous ways of knowing and being.
The heteronormative sex/gender system regulates and defines bodies in ways that are limited by
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male/masculine and female/feminine. Rosi Braidotti suggests the possibility of a shift away from
definitions of sex/gender that are contingent on binary-coded meaning:
[T]he subject of feminism is not Woman as the complementary and specular other
of man but rather a complex and multi-layered embodied subject who has taken
her distance from the institution of femininity. ‘She’ no longer coincides with the
disempowered reflection of a dominant subject who casts his masculinity in a
universalistic posture. She, in fact, may no longer be a she, but the subject of quite
another story: a subject-in-process, a mutant, the other of the Other, a postWoman embodied subject cast in female morphology who has already undergone
an essential metamorphosis. (11-12)
Braidotti argues for the possibility of transformation within a heteronormative system. She
suggests that starting from a binary standpoint does not limit the possible outcomes. Braidotti has
re-classified the subject of feminism as “she” who exists in multiple and changeable forms.
It seems that rather than an experiencing an empowering metamorphosis, Frank
undergoes a transmogrification, or a “change often with grotesque or humorous effect”
(“Transmogrify”). Banks sets out to throw the ideologies surrounding gender norms out of
balance, but really just creates a “seventeen-year-old monster” (Punter 168), or a human
aberration who is doomed to isolation and/or societal ridicule. Banks does not successfully
question or challenge the binary gender system, but re-situates Frank within it. Frank is doomed
to suffer on the fringes because s/he is neither a “credible” male nor an “acceptable” female, but
Banks forges ahead and ends the novel on a falsely positive note: “Now the door closes, and my
journey begins” (244). Frank seems oddly eager to live as a woman and turn h/er back on
everything s/he was socialized to believe. The message is unsettlingly clear: conformity and
close adherence to idealized sex/gender norms is the key to happiness and an identity, which is
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free from ambiguity. However, why does a person’s “reality” come down to sex/gender? How
has sex/gender become the starting place for social, cultural, and discursive practices? In regards
to the novel’s end, it would seem that the only thing missing is a scene where Frank, now a fully
feminized Frances, runs across the bridge to the mainland, dress blowing in the wind, into the
arms of the welcoming townspeople.
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Works Cited
Banks, Iain. The Wasp Factory. London: Abacus, 1984.
Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards A Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge:
Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
Butler, Judith P. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993.
---, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
---, Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Preface: In A Time of Monsters.” Monster Theory. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome
Cohen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. vii-xiii.
---, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis:
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