Mary Shelley and the Conception of the Monstrous Vegan

Abstract

Chapter 1 argues that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) marks the origins of the ‘monstrous vegan’ trope. The chapter establishes the vegetarian contexts influencing Shelley’s novel before outlining the principal defining traits of the monstrous vegan. First, the monster’s refusal to eat meat is evidenced and explored in relation to Romantic vegetarianism. Second, his hybrid physiognomy, composed of remnants from the slaughterhouse and charnel house, allows for close attention to acts of visual recognition throughout the novel. Third, the creature’s birth outside of the confines of heterosexual reproduction is explored in relation to his challenge to reproductive futurities, with vegetarianism seen to offer a circular return to a Golden Age of humankind. Finally, the creature’s relation to literary authorship establishes that monstrous vegans bring to the fore the difficulty of inscribing ethical identities onto bodies.