Since the Season 3 opener of Penny Dreadful, I have been tryingto understand Dr. Frankenstein’s current frame of mind or where his story line is headed.
Let me recap first…
Episode 1:
We meet Dr. Frankenstein’s old friend Dr. Jekyll. After a bit of catching up and an overview of Dr. Frankenstein’s poor life and health choices, Dr. Frankenstein pleads for Dr. Jekyll to help him kill Lily. Yet, as Dr. Jekyll deduces correctly, Dr. Frankenstein really wants his version of Lily back. He is (pathetically) in love with her, but only with the traditional domesticated version of her seen in the first half of second season. Dr. Jekyll agrees to help his dear friend.
Episode 2:
The episode opens with a look at the current state of the ever evolving Lily. Essentially, her and Dorian kill a bunch of rich deplorable excuses for men as they are about the watch a nude girl be tortured and dismantled. They did it to save the girl (or more like posses the girl). Dr. Jekyll shows Dr. Frankenstein his underground lab in the basement of a mental institution. Dr. Frankenstein experiences Dr. Jekyll’s work for the first time. Still desperately in love with Lily, Dr. Frankenstein pulls a page out of the Sweeney Todd screen play, and sits outside of Dorian’s mansion waiting for a glimpse of Lily. Seeing him, Lily approaches Dr. Frankenstein. Even though it falls on deaf ears, Lily tells him that his love is based on a fictionalized version of her, and that he should run before he she’s what terrible things she’s about to do.
It was in the second episode that I had a revelation. Penny Dreadful is set in Victorian England (primarily) where there were a set of rules and traditions in society. One needs to remember that this was before or just as the Suffragette Movement had begun, so the rights of women were limited at best. Except that is not exactly how it is played out in Penny Dreadful. It is this shift from the traditional that makes me think that Penny Dreadful is intentionally questioning the roles of man and woman, power and tradition. Even more so it is the men’s place and their roles that are being questioned.
Like Game of Thrones, Penny Dreadful argues that each characters is just as capable of being good as they are at being bad. In a much less nuanced way, Penny Dreadful directly attacks the idea of being a monster. What happens when everyone has the potential to be a monster or that the monster is already inside of us waiting to be born?
Consider Dr. Frankenstein’s last living creations.
John Clare, Dr. Frankenstein’s first creation, knows what he is, but he feels shame in that. Part of this is because of the way that Dr. Frankenstein treated him early on. There is a a great deal of humility in John Clare. He wants to find a place where he can truly live and co-habitat with human beings as they exist. This is seen when he works at the theater and when he works at the house of horrors. In many ways, there are aspects of his thinking and journey that parallel Vanessa’s. It is in the acceptance of the monster without giving up on humility and kindness that makes both John Clare and Vanessa Ives so endearing as characters.
One significant difference between Lily and John Clare is that Lily remembers her life as Brona Croft. Where John Clare found humility, Lily saw vengeance and a chance to create a world in her vision. Based on Lily’s response, the audience can see that Brona Croft went through many horrible ordeals, which were primarily acted out by the men in her life. Yet, instead of her being entirely vengeful, there seems to be sorrowfulness in her actions. She sees her second life as Lily as a chance to make life better. She actively makes chooses when she kills, stays with Dorian, takes in the young girl, etc. The audience sees this in her discussion with Dr. Frankenstein at the end of Episode 2. She is not callous to Dr. Frankenstein. When she tells him that his Lily was nothing but fiction, she calm. When she tells him to leave, she does with a gentle manner indicating that she does not want him to get hurt. There is sympathy in the actions toward Dr. Frankenstein.
Ultimately, Penny Dreadful is showing Dr. Frankenstein’s need for control while at the same time showing John Clare and Lily consciously pushing him as far away as they can. John Clare and Lily are not children. They are autonomous beings that Dr. Frankenstein has no sway on, and his response has been to destroy his creations (and usually try again).
Dr. Frankenstein is so stuck in his ideals of life and death (and even the roles of women and children) that he continues to get stuck in the cycle which appears to being hurting and breaking him down more than anyone else. When John Clare did not work as originally planned, Dr. Frankenstein made a new monster. John Clare killed Proteus. Then in an act of desperation and fear, Dr. Frankenstein contemplates and nearly shoots John Clare. In a similar act when Lily abandons him, Dr. Frankenstein decides either that he wants Lily back as he imagined her or she needs to be destroyed completely.
All of which begs the question, who is more of a monster? Is Dr. Frankenstein in his pursuit for control? Is Lily in her dreams of vengeance and a new life? Or is John Clare the monster in his hope of finding his place in the world?
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