Lily Frankenstein quotes from Penny Dreadful

Lily

We flatter our men with our pain, we bow before them, we make ourselves dolls for their amusement, we lose our dignity in corsets and high shoes and gossip and the slavery of marriage! And our reward for this service? The back of the hand...the face turned to the pillow...the bloody, aching cunt as you force us onto your beds to take your fat, heaving bodies! [her voice becomes Brona's] You drag us into the alleys, my lad, and cram yourselves into our mouths for two bob when you're not beating us senseless! When we're not bloody from the eyes, and the mouth, and the ass and the cunt! Never again... will I kneel to any man. Now they shall kneel to me.

Lily

Liberty is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.

Lily

We are not women who crawl. We are not women who kneel. And for this, we will be branded radicals. Revolutionists. Women who are strong and refuse to be degraded and who choose to protect themselves are called monsters. That is the world's crime, not ours.

Lily

There are some wounds that can never heal. There are scars that make us who we are - without them, we don't exist.

Lily

You haven't told me. What's my name?

Victor

Lily. Your name is Lily. The flower of resurrection and rebirth.

Lily

Why does that make me sad? Why should a flower make me sad. I don't understand. The words come out, but with so little meaning. [cries]

Victor

Shh. Be still. It will take time. But you'll learn. I'll show you what life is.

Lily

Cousin, teach me. I am at your mercy.

Victor

I shall.

Lily

So, women wear corsets so they don't exert themselves?

Victor

Partly.

Lily

What would be the danger if they did?

Victor

They'd take over the world.

Lily

You musn't be here. There's nothing here for you.

Victor

Where you go, I belong.

Lily

God help you if you follow my path, Victor. Take your romance and your memories of your most current fiction and go.

Victor

No. I must save you from one of them. One way or another, you're my responsibility. I created you.

Lily

I need no man to save me. And I think, in a way, I created you more than you created me. First love, Victor. You will recover. Do not come here again. You will not like what I am becoming.

Lily

All men are slaves to their appetites.

Justine

Even Dorian?

Lily

Dorian is an exceptional creature.

Justine

He's a man.

Lily

But unlike all others.

Justine

I've never known a man who didn't want to fuck me or beat me. Can you say different?

Dorian

Do you not yet comprehend the wicked secret of the immortal? All age and die, save you. All rot and fall to dust, save you. Any child you bear becomes a crone and perishes before your eyes. Any lover withers and shrinks into incontinence and bent, toothless senility, while you, only you, never age, never die, never fade - alone. But after a time you'll lose the desire for passion entirely, for connection with anyone, like a muscle that atrophies from lack of use. [glances at the portraits] And one day you will realize that you have become like them - beautiful and dead. You have become a perfect portrait of yourself.

Lily

An eternity without passion, without affection, caring for nobody...

Dorian

[smiles] A small price to pay for such immortal perfection, don't you think?

Lily

Goodbye, Dorian. I hope they watch over you.

Dorian

You'll be back, and I'll be here. [pause] I'll always be here.