GLR March-April 2026

identity. In the historical context of these works, “queer” en compasses identities and behaviors that deviate from dominant heteronormative expectations, including nonreproductive male relationships, emotional intimacy between men, and the re pression or concealment of desires that could be socially stig matized. Scrutinizing these texts thus opens up readings that detect homosocial or homoerotic subtexts and highlights how the protagonists’ double lives and creations metaphorically re flect the pressures and anxieties of living a “queer” existence in a rigidly moralistic society. In the 19th century’s system of sex, gender, and body norms, the bachelor occupied an inherently unstable position— neither fulfilling the moral and reproductive duties of the hus band nor fully outside the social gaze. Whereas a husband’s identity was grounded in the tangible legal and domestic frame work of marriage, the bachelor was defined by a conceptual absence, by that which he was not . This absence provoked cul tural unease, for bachelorhood evoked possibilities ranging from the romantic ideal of independence to the darker associ ations of idleness, sexual abnormality, or even moral degener acy. Such ambiguity finds its fictional parallel in Victor Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll—publicly respected men of sci ence who, in their private lives, remain unmoored from the sta bilizing presence of women and the domestic sphere. Their isolation renders them susceptible to forms of secrecy, obses sion, and self-division that contemporary commentators might have read as symptoms of “male hysteria.” Dr. Jekyll himself hints at the social and personal strain of this position: “I am painfully situated … my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.” Both Victor and Dr. Jekyll’s close-knit societies as well as their laboratories represent exclusively male spaces. Through out both novels, men dine together, have tea together, and drink gin together. The structure of Frankenstein depends on men talking to each other: the monster to Victor and Victor to his male friends. And when Victor becomes engaged to his cousin Elizabeth, he has an emotional breakdown. Similarly, two of Jekyll’s friends maintain a peculiar male bonding ritual on weekly excursions: It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sun day walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these ex cursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even re sisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them un interrupted. As Gothic literature, both stories relate to their eras as re actions to advances in science, as commentary on 19th-century consciousness, and as reflections of new masculine spaces. The tales of Shelley and Stevenson’s monstrous doubles not only haunt the foggy streets of 19th-century London; they also mir ror the duplicity beneath the era’s stiff collars and polite soci ety. Just as Victor Frankenstein’s creature and Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego lead double lives, many men of the time also navigated se 12

cret worlds hidden behind respectable façades. Moreover, Shel ley and Stevenson’s monsters embody the secret subcultures, coded languages, and shadowy meeting places that flourished under the surface of English society. Their dual natures remind us that beneath the veneer of progress and propriety, 19th-cen tury England was a stage for hidden identities and concealed desires, where science and secrecy danced hand in hand— sometimes with terrifying results.

galveston 1977

our first spring break we shared a beach house though it was april it was chilly and we saw only puffy dowagers in bathing caps enormous dull yellow dogs we tapped our typewriters sang wistful pop and roasted hens

traced the surf for hours fizzy suds between toes you composed plays and i my poetry found a glass jar

for frail wild flowers that reminded you

of your dads funeral we collaborated on goofy

poems nobody cries when a jellyfish dies

you looked funny first thing in the morning white white jockey shorts horn rimmed glasses maybe like jesus i had no idea 40 years later that week would tear into me like a cyclone when i heard you breathing as we slept you were my brother my only brother

C HRISTOPHER S ODEN

TheG & LR