A Gothic Mirror: Reflections on Abjection in Frankenstein
BY ELLIOTT HYON ‘24
I’ve never had my own mirror at Princeton. I return from Los Angeles every semester with a neatly furnished room on behalf of Summer Storage and a perpetually unchecked checkbox in the Reminders widget on my phone: “buy dorm mirror”. The U-Store sells them for $25, or a discounted $22.50 if you have membership. I could also ride the weekend shopper to Target and find the same rectangular one for $7. Or I could choose the unconventional route of four grand mirror tiles on Amazon for the price of $18.
But for four semesters, I’ve never bought a mirror, and that’s not something I’ll ever change. People are always surprised when I mention this. They question how I can walk out of my room, unencumbered by the burden of how I look. But I haven’t rejected all mirrors: just the gaze that the full-length mirror imposes. I exist as a murky figure, darting between hazy bathroom mirrors after showers and my phone camera on the way to class. I’ve made a lurching half-peace with not seeing the totality of myself.
I avoid mirrors because there is something haunting about the gaze they impose. We grow up seeing our reflections in the mirror and believe it registers reality only to find out through photos that they are actually a reversal. When we look into mirrors, our brain corrects disproportionate features– eyes that are different sizes, a nose that might not be so straight, eyebrows at different levels. This correction does not take place in real life. We are not as symmetrical as we once thought we were and we are forced to confront this distortion.
But I cannot elude all mirrors. Some reflective surfaces are disguised. Like mirrors, people reflect back a vision of yourself that is unfamiliar. My sense of self is shattered because I cannot escape the eyes of others that mirror a distorted view of myself. I am plagued by the burden of knowing that other people are projecting their own thoughts and beliefs onto me, rendering me conscious of my very being without my consent or power to do anything about it. I cannot be ignorant of this fact when it shapes my daily life: how others perceive me and in turn, how I perceive myself.
And so there is something so liberating to me about eluding perception. I lower my head to the ground, reject all eye contact, and march out of my dorm in sunglasses, a face mask, and a thick jacket. I am an amorphous shape moving through the world. It is only when this disguise is shattered with exclamatory greetings that I realize how illusory this projection of anonymity is.
I mirror my own struggle with consciousness in the plight of Frankenstein’s creature. Rejected by his own Creator for an existence he never asked for, he laments, “but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.”
The creature realizes that in contrast to the graceful, beautiful forms of the humans he admires, he is a monster stitched together and cast away from his Maker at birth. In spite of his physical disfigurement, his soul is pure and compassionate. He cannot act on this kindness against the ubiquitous countenance of human terror and isolation because his appearance does not align with the normative standards of beauty. He experiences abjection when the distinction between his personal image and monstrosity collapses and he must come to terms with his malformation. Abjection is queer; it is the transgression of all that is normative and sacred.
Abjection is when my mother looks at me through the rearview mirror of the car as she is picking me up from the airport and reminds me that every day she prays to God that I will settle down with a Korean wife and be blessed with many children. Abjection is when my father shakes his head as he sees two girls kissing and I turn my eyes away to absolve my own guilt. Abjection is when my younger brother is interrogated by old friends from church about my sexuality, forcing me to come out against my will.
The process doesn’t end when I exit one community to seek refuge in another. When sexuality sees color, acceptance becomes conditional. My flesh betrays me and I become ornamental—simultaneously sexualized and barred from sexuality. When I travel to Lisbon with my friends for spring break, I am greeted with ni hao from men trying to hit on me in a gay club. Wrong country, but at least they didn’t slant their eyes. A boy I meet in Georgia asks me if I am from “the country with sushi” and that Asian cultures are the most beautiful in the world. Nothing he said made me feel beautiful.
In all instances, my existence is being constructed by other people against my free will. It is a contradictory life to endure rejection from every community that affirms one part of you and denies the other.
When I look in a full-length mirror, my own reflection engages me in the cycle of abjection. Awkward limbs hanging down, bones jutting out, the rejection of a body I did not choose and desperately struggle to bring myself to love. Acne scars etch tapered grooves against the tan skin I spent my childhood working to lighten with milk and lemon juice. Two dangling snake earrings are my signature statement among jewelry that I shed whenever circumstances dictate the need to shift how I present myself. Like the creature, I know that I am stitched together, parts of me existing in tandem that should not be and never have been congruent. I see myself and I know— I am queer, I am Asian, I am abject.