Robert Walton Laid Down In His Bed And Wrote Every Letter Gushing About Victor To Margaret In This Pose

soft jazz music plays as the love of walton’s life enters on-stage, the world goes all pink and slo-mo and dreamy. record scratch, pans to victor frankenstein coughing up a hairball

i am not immune to blasting my favourite characters with the neurodivergent beam — i think there is something very comforting about a character from a book written long before these things were understood (at least with the vocabulary we have today) articulating things about themselves that you can see something of yourself in

with that in mind, let me take you on a journey where i explain in far more detail than probably necessary

Why Captain Robert Walton from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) has ADHD (in my non-professional neurodivergent opinion)!

i’ll be going through some common ADHD symptoms and presenting evidence from the text to demonstrate how Walton, in his own representation of himself, can be interpreted as displaying these traits

this got Long so analysis under the cut!

— INATTENTIVENESS AND FOCUS

Walton has a strong and active imagination, and seems prone to excessive daydreaming and letting his mind wander, even becoming distracted by sensory input (the sublime beauty of nature, lol):

Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid.

He feels that he is set apart by his own manner of thinking, that his mind is in need of "regulation":

Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

The "keeping" that Shelley refers to is artistic terminology meaning

The maintenance of the proper relation between the representations of nearer and more distant objects in a picture; [...] the maintenance of harmony of composition. (X)

I would interpret Walton's meaning here to be that he understands his thoughts to be somewhat "all over the place" or lacking practicality; he is aware that he has an overzealous and ambitious personality, and requires a sense of harmony (ideally, in the form of an understanding friend) who will keep him focused.

Even Victor comments on Walton seeming to become impatient with him or lose focus during his own tangent:

Victor: But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed.

(adhd bitches be like let me infodump my entire brain at you and tell you seven unrelated stories before getting to the point but the SECOND someone else goes off topic it's so over)

Walton's inattentiveness is best demonstrated by his lack of concentration on things like his education in favour of his interests when he was a boy:

My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night[...]

and speaking of!

— HYPERFIXATIONS

I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

^ me when i will go insane if i don't have my silly little Topics to obsess over. this guy gets it

Walton is clearly influenced heavily by his fixations; polar exploration and his "passionate enthusiasm for the dangerous mysteries of ocean" are lifelong special interests for him. He refers to his voyage as "the favourite dream of my early years", and also developed a love for poetry from a young age:

[...] for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas’ books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country;

When he is forbidden for pursuing a seafaring life by his father, and in doing so prevented from indulging his main interests, Walton becomes fixated solely on literature, attempting to become a poet himself:

These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

Interestingly, when he fails to achieve his literary goal, his attention seemingly switches seamlessly back to his previous interests when he is finally given the opportunity to pursue them - jumping between hyperfixations in search of dopamine is often experienced by many with ADHD:

You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.

Walton claims that he is “practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour” but this mostly seems applicable when he can hyperfocus on tasks that are stimulating to him and related to his interests - for example, when he prepares for his voyage while working on whaling ships:

I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage.

— HYPERACTIVITY, IMPULSIVITY AND RESTLESSNESS

i mean. i think most people would consider sailing off to explore as-yet unknown and extremely dangerous parts of the world completely of your own volition impulsive no matter how long you've been planning to do it

Even so, Walton seems to display a reduced sense of danger even upon "the commencement of an enterprise which you [Margaret] have regarded with such evil forebodings":

These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.

Walton's hyperactivity can be seen in his innate restlessness and never wanting to feel “settled” or too comfortable:

My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.

His wanderlust drives him forward, literally physically sending him to places very few have ever been:

[...] there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

To me, this line indicates that Walton has an awareness of his own overwhelming eagerness (and tbh this is also how I would describe what my own ADHD feels like sometimes):

I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties.

Walton also seems prone to excessive talking and infodumping, demonstrated even by the act of sending his sister such long and detailed letters in the first place. He is a grade A yapper and that is why we even have the story in the first place!

My favourite evidence of this is when Walton is so taken by the romantic story of his ship's master that he derails his entire letter to his sister to tell her about it, saying:

This, briefly, is his story.

Reader: the story was not brief.

My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus.

you don't say!

— POOR PLANNING AND PRIORITISATION

Despite committing himself to his voyage for six years and having thought of it for much longer, Walton doesn't seem to have uh. much of an actual concrete plan:

I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.

In relation to this, let me just leave this extract from Jessica Richard's article '“A paradise of my own creation”: Frankenstein and the improbable romance of polar exploration' here:

Shelley subtly indicates Walton’s incompetence as an expedition leader (despite his extensive reading and apprenticeships on Greenland whaling vessels) when she has him begin his journey on a rather late date, July 7th. Whether Walton is simply a poor planner, or, as Frankenstein himself fears, he “share[s] my madness,” a departure date so late in the season all but dooms his enterprise to failure from the outset. (p. 299)

ouch!

He seems to have little awareness of this aspect of his personality; he assures his sister that:

I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.

Yet to Victor, he describes:

how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought[...]

Not only does he neglect his duties as captain to care for Victor, even while his ship is imperilled by pack ice…

Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created.

… he is highly averse to abandoning his voyage even when his crew threatens mutiny:

We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They insisted, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed I would instantly direct my course southwards. This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived the idea of returning if set free.

oh robert........

— EMOTIONAL DYSREGULATION AND SOCIAL DIFFICULTIES

This seems to be a persistent issue for Walton; he continually refers to the fluctuation of his own emotions and his inability to regulate them on his own:

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.

He is deeply desirous of understanding and community with others, but is left feeling lonely and like an outsider, having difficulty connecting with most people including the men he sails with:

A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship:

Walton implies that he is insecure of aspects of his personality, and is in need of external validation and someone to “sympathise with and love” him:

How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!

Lastly, this line appears in the 1831 version of the novel only but it is one that, for me, ties together a lot of the book's themes especially with regard to neurodiversity and is generally one of the most affecting for me personally for that reason:

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.

me too, buddy. me too

aaaaaaaand that's all(!) i have to say for now

most of this is really just based on my own experiences and traits (am i projecting? absolutely. but am i correct? also yes) and just my own interpretation and i’m sure i’ve left out SO much but i had fun putting my hyperfix spinterest hat on and hopefully it was interesting to read! let me know your thoughts!

i was trying to find a specific post that i half-remembered at like 4am last night but out of context this is really funny

Caring about Frankenstein was a mistake because I was just subjected to someone’s Horrid take out of nowhere and my nervous system reacted like a gun went off next to my head

victor frankenstein was not only a man but also a woman and a girl

stupid idiot learns his actions have consequences

i kinda wish more people discussed when bringing up the Gloves in hammer frankenstein that victor wears them because of his disability. it is one of the most consistently canon facts not just about victor, but in universe, period, considering all the contradictions and unreliable narration in the series.

he has been disabled since the fire during the ending of evil at the very least, and if even you don't consider that movie canon, his disability is still mentioned, focused on, and/or important throughout every film after that. the motifs of fire, disability, and mind vs body of the series are only intensified and made more profound considering victor's disability.

the sheer significance of the disability being of his hands, his hands of G-d, the things he uses to create is something that i rarely ever see anyone else pointing out. besides the implications of him being a disabled person who wants to literally have a perfect, immortal body already being powerful enough on its own to make it worthy of note, it can also be looked upon as a more visual metaphor/representation of infertility.

the plots and dramas of every film after evil are very much fueled by him being disabled. and that is just explicitly canon.

hes a 10 and but he only speaks in biblical metaphors consciously showed up in your dreams twice and affirms youre gonna end up telling him your worst secrets

victor hate posts be like: he’s bad. he’s annoying. i hate him. he’s an awful 19 year old single father. he sucks

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Joellen Bland | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Gary P. Cohen and Jeffrey Jackson | FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady & James V. Hart | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley.

frankenstein & fatherhood