Appunti Mary Shelley e Frankenstein, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Appunti Mary Shelley e Frankenstein e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY 1797-1851 Mary Shelley was born in 1797 and was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft was a well-known radical feminist, but also a romantic intellectual and one of the main proto-feminist philosophers. Author of travel books, short stories, novels and works on children’s education. She analyzed the contemporary issues that women had to face to reach their autonomy. It was almost impossible to think about equality at that time. There were neither legal nor civil rights for women. She was the first who expressed the necessity of a change for women. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who believed that women should not receive a rational education. She argues that women's education ought to match their position in society, and that they are essential to the nation because they raise its children and could act as respected "companions" to their husbands. Wollstonecraft maintains that women are human beings deserving the same fundamental rights as men, and that treating them as mere ornaments or property for men undermines the moral foundations of society. Wollstonecraft had an illegitimate daughter, Fanny Imlay, who was born from her relationship with an American diplomat, out of marriage. Then she met and married Godwin with whom she had another daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, she died 10 days after giving birth for infection. Mary Shelley’s life begins with death, pain. Her father, William Godwin, was a radical, a member of a religious illegal sect, not recognized from the Anglican church. He produced one of the most famous philosophical texts of the time: an Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793), that was the base for a philosophical anarchy. He was extremely critical of the institutions of the time, such as the Parliament, the Church, the Court of justice because they treated citizens unfairly, according to their class, gender, race. He was also a popular novelist (social justice, equality, fearless self-expression, Romantic ideal of social progress). Mary Shelley was raised by her father who was able to provide her with a rich education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbor with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship, who already had a daughter, Claire. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through France and Switzerland, and then returned to England. Mary and Percy had a girl-child, who died a few days later. One year later they had a son, William, who will die a few years later and then they left England together with Claire for Geneva, where they met Lord Byron (who had already formed a relationship with Claire), and his physician Dr Polidori. Mary, Shelley and Claire settled close to Byron at the Villa Diodati, near Geneva, where they spent the summer (1816 was known as the year without a summer). Mary wrote that in that summer the sky was always covered by clouds. It was known as the summer without sun. In that summer she was thinking of a novel. One night she had a nightmare and had an idea for the story of Frankenstein. After their return to England Fanny Imlay, Mary’s half-sister; committed suicide and a few times later, the same did Harriet, Shelley’s first wife. After that, Mary and Shelley got married in London (30 December 1816). They had another daughter, Clara, and left again for Italy, where Clara died one year later. They had another son, Percy Florence. FRANKENSTEIN, or THE MODERN PROMETHEUS The first edition was published anonymously in 1818, because it was Mary’s first publication and she was afraid that, being a young woman, daughter of two well-known “radicals”, it would have been denied. Her name first appeared in the second version, in 1821. The first edition was accompanied by a Preface written by Percy Shelley in the guise of the author in order to contextualize some ideas. His involvement was a source of speculation for some critics who suggested that he could be considered as co-author. It sold a few copies, until in 1823 the text became a play in three acts (which was called Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein) and had an enormous success. Its popularity produced a proliferation of other adaptations. A month after the staging of Peake, the publisher Whittaker decided to commission Mary Shelley a second edition of her novel which came out in the same year 1823. It was changed: the monster began mute, at the beginning it had a voice. But it was in 1831 that Frankenstein obtained a real success. It was published the final edition with a very long introduction of the author. In the 1831 version, Victor’s education is altered, so that his fascination with alchemy and Renaissance scientists develops through lack of proper guidance: the interest in science which is part of his family background disappears. He is given more of a conscience and the language used is explicitly religious. Walton is used to establish the nobility of Victor’s character. Elizabeth Lavenza is no longer Victor’s cousin, but a stranger adopted by his family. Clerval’s desire for travel is directed specifically towards becoming a colonial administrator. The changes were clearly designed to tone down anything too radical and challenging. The possibility of incest is removed, Clerval’s colonial ambitions imply an approval of colonialism; both Victor and Walton are provided with more excuses for their explorations and ambitions. Percy Shelley tried to make clearer why the creature changes through the novel , beginning as an innocent creature and turning into a cruel and selfish monster. What does he use as a justification of this change? He explains that we do not born as good or bad but often it is the environment in which we live that determines our nature. In this perspective John Locke suggested that humanity was neither naturally good nor evil, but a tabula rasa upon which experience would “write”; Jean-Jacques Rousseau put forward the idea of “the natural man”, who is constricted and corrupted by society. These ideas are examined via the effect upon the Creature of his treatment by humanity in general and Victor in particular, which constitutes some of the most poignant moment in the novel. The story emerged from the notorious “ghost-story” contest involving Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr Polidori at the Villa Diodati in June 1816. Byron challenged the group to tell a ghost story for their mutual entertainment. According to Mary Shelley’s account, a conversation between Percy Shelley and Byron concerning the principle of life gave rise to the “acute mental vision” from leg, joining muscle and nerve. This produced movement which, according to Galvani, demonstrated how animals possessed a “nervous electrical fluid” that he called “animal electricity”. MASCULINITY AND SCIENCE For Mary Shelley two of the most important aspects of science centre upon the essential masculinity of scientific thought and the responsibility of the scientist in the aftermath of his experiments. The masculinity is evident in the removal of any feminine element from the Creature’s birth; the scientific process activated by Victor excludes any sense of the humanity of the Creature and defines life only on scientific terms. The attempt by Victor’s masculine science to appropriate the quintessentially feminine act of childbirth must eventually fail because he never thinks about what he will do with his creation once alive. The exclusion of femininity extends to the consistent marginalization and destruction of women by Victor’s ‘progress’. Justine Moritz’s execution is caused, initially, by Victor’s actions and then his cowardice in refusing to tell the truth. Elizabeth Lavenza’s relationship with Victor is sacrificed as he pursues his obsession, until she literally becomes a sacrifice on the altar of his ambitions; and this destructiveness also extends to Victor’s treatment of the half-completed female Creature. All these deaths are violent, and all come about through male intrusion into a female process in which masculinity plays a much more peripheral role. The novel, therefore, articulates a confrontation between a scientific pursuit seen as masculine and a feminine nature which is perverted or destroyed by masculinity. Mary Shelley, doubtless inspired by her mother’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, specifically portrays the consequences of a social construction of gender that values the male above the female. Victor Frankenstein’s nineteenth- century Genevan society is founded on a rigid division of sex roles: the male inhabits the public sphere, the female is relegated to the private or domestic sphere. As a consequence of this sexual division of labor, masculine work is kept outside of the domestic realm; hence intellectual activity is segregated from emotional activity. Victor Frankenstein cannot do scientific research and think lovingly of Elizabeth and his family at the same time. This separation of masculine work from the domestic affections leads directly to Frankenstein’s downfall. Because Frankenstein cannot work and love at the same time, he fails to feel empathy for the creature he is constructing and callously makes him eight feet tall simply because “the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed”. NARRATIVE FORM The form of the novel is epistolary and multi-layered and the narrative structure is tripartite and is as follows: 1) The epistle story of Captain Robert Walton to his sister Margaret that works as a sort of frame to the novel. 2) The story of Victor Frankenstein told by Victor to Robert Walton when the latter saves Victor lost in the Pole. 3) The story of the Monster told to Victor in the meeting in the Alps and reported to Walton. The structure is symmetrical: the story begins with Walton, moves to Frankenstein, then to the Creature, then back to Frankenstein and finally to Walton again. This narrative pattern can also be described as triangular: each of the three characters has important conversations with the two others and this pattern also marks the exclusion of all other characters from the story. Effects of this narrative form: - There is no omniscient narrator to comment or to guide understanding. The readers have to draw their own consequences. - It conceals the author from the reader. According to Anne Mellor it is consequence of Mary Shelley’s “anxiety of authorship”: she doubted the legitimacy of her own literary voice, so she decided to speak through three male characters, members of the sex “authorized” to write and speak. Beth Newman sees this choice as a strategy to destabilize the text: each character writes his own version of the story, not the version. - The Creature’s narrative is the heart and center of the text and lies literally at the center, expressing the key themes of abandonment, responsibility and the effect of environment. Walton’s role as primary narrator has several dimensions. He mediates the stories of Victor and the Creature and also introduces some of the key themes. Walton is on voyage of discovery to the North Pole and his motivation for his ambitions foregrounds that of Victor Frankenstein. Walton’s yearning for a friend and companion with whom to share his aspirations and ambitions is answered by the finding of Frankenstein. Although their friendship is short-lived, it is marked by Walton’s emphasis on Victor’s “benevolence”, “sweetness” and “nobility”. However, Walton is also linked with the Creature: he speaks of his “neglected” education and that he was “passionately fond of reading”. His friendship with Victor also parallels the Creature’s desire for a like-minded companion to alleviate his loneliness. This similarity shows the normality of the Creature’s desire and his understandable rage and pain at their denial. Walton’s personality is important only in so far as it reveals aspects of Victor or the Creature. Genre: Gothic, Jacobin, Sentimental, Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Abolitionist. Some themes and interpretations: Education; Otherness; Double; Natural vs Unnatural; Science vs Magic and Occult; the Physiognomy of Johan Casper Lavater; the Android (being artificial in human likeness) or the Cyborg (which unlike the former is also made up of biological parts). VICTOR AND THE CREATURE Mary Shelley demonstrates that creation does not stop at the moment of life. Vitor manufactures his Creature, but then he literally creates him as a monster by his rejection. The Creature’s account of his continued attempts to make friendly contact with others, and the hostility with which he is constantly met, thus marks him as a tragic figure whose testimony is deeply moving. Victor’s self-obsession is boundless. His primary concern with his own ambitions is reflected in his irresponsibility. Even he, however, cannot be unmoved by the Creature’s story and agrees to make a female companion for him. He again abandons his responsibilities to the Creature by refusing to complete the female. He fears creating a monstrous other race who might run riot over the earth; yet the Creature gives no indication that he intends to reproduce, and simply speaks of living in isolation with his companion until both should die. The destruction of the female Creature is the catalyst for the deaths of Clerval and Elizabeth and the final pursuit across the northern ice. This episode reveals a change in the balance of power between Victor and the Creature. During the latter’s narrative, only his vulnerability and need of Frankenstein were evident: but by the time of this final chase, the Creature dominates the relationship, leading Victor across the wilderness, leaving food, markers and messages for him. The Creature kills Frankenstein’s family, not Victor himself; Frankenstein fails to destroy the Creature: and their deaths occur almost simultaneously, but not at each other’s hands. Just the two protagonists remain, isolated and bound by their obsessive desire for revenge, their independence becomes absolute. The final scenes also reveal the indissoluble bond of parent and child. The Creature’s lament after Victor’s death is a cry of pain and also of remorse. Before his death Victor speaks of another “who may succeed” where he has failed: he has learned little from the suffering he has caused. His death is followed by the final appearance of the Creature; this juxtaposition of the survival of Frankenstein’s ambition maintains the ambiguity towards science that characterizes the novel, as the desire for further progression is paralleled by the tragic results of such progression. The balance of sympathy at the novel’s conclusion is firmly in favour of the Creature. Thus Mary Shelley leaves us with an image of Frankenstein’s scientific “success” but parental failure. ADAPTATIONS OF FRANKENSTEIN 1927: Peggy Webling wrote Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre- she created a play where she confused (willingly) the creator with the creature, she made of Frankenstein (here Henry) a mad scientist, and, in a more radical revision, referred to the Creature as 'Frankenstein.' In his drama, Webling made the scientist and his creature a kind of double. This version, this adaptation has influenced the common, contemporary idea people have about Frankenstein. In 1931 Universal Pictures bought the rights and shot the most famous and popular film version of the Frankenstein (James Whale - Boris Karloff). James Whale’s 1931 movie is based on the theatrical version of Peggy Webling. In Webling's play, and then in Whale's film, the monster does not learn evil, but is rather created as evil itself. The film presents Victor Frankenstein as a mad scientist. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein’s creature turns into a monster after he learns hatred, fear and knows evil because it is rejected by society and feared for his monstrous appearance. In the Frankenstein monster movie, the brain of a criminal is implanted, therefore his instincts are evil from 'birth'. Thus disappear the social and educational reasons and aims that characterize Mary Shelley’s creature. Universal Studios are only interested in the creature's 'monstrosity', in the same way as they were interested in the character of Dracula, removing any notion or source of sympathy for the monster, characterizing him as a well-rounded 'villain'. In Shelley's novel, Frankenstein's monster is an articulate and intelligent conversationalist. In the movie, he is completely silent, a feature that unceasingly emphasizes his evil behavior. In Shelley’s version He was a noble creature but then he was destroyed by his loneliness, solitude. If his creator had taken care of him, he would have remained a noble creature. namelessness and by the epithets which dehumanize him (demon, monster). He remains invisible until the very end. Due to his rejection by the external world, he undergoes a painful process of inner transformation that allows him to change and acquire self-awareness and self-determination against a fixed and discriminatory social context. Thus the Monster turns in a situated subjectivity, a subjectivity that acquires that asks for love and sympathy, only to resort ultimately to revenge. The Creature, despite his being unnamed and despite his invisibility, asks to be recognized and continuously asks “Who am I? What am I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?” These are the questions that the Creature poses to his creator and that have tormented his mind. Yet, these existential and ontological questions cannot find an answer, if not in the Creature’s stubborn determination to survive: hence, his effort to bridge the gap between anonymity and recognizability. LANGUAGE The creature discovers the language and how important it is. He discovers that being able to deal with language can make him be accepted. Language can make him overcome his situation. He learns to read by overhearing Felix de Lacey’s education of the Arabian Safie and then by finding some books which he tries to decipher. These books are important in understanding the novel. He reads the Plutarch’s Lives and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werther, two very different texts. Through them he has access to some human dimensions, such as pain, love, grieve. He expresses being overwhelmed, his understanding of human nature, how it can be majestic and powerful. He feels unable to be part of this picture. He feels despair. He also reads Volney’s Ruins of Empire and Milton’s Paradise Lost. They all represent ideas important in Romantic thinking and give the Creature points of reference. Paradise Lost is particularly significant: his reading registers the terrible recognition that his humanity is unheeded and that he is seen as evil, even though he is also tragically isolated and suffering. Thanks to the De Laceys the Creature learns to read and write and acquires the principles of speech and communication. The Creature’s great effort to learn how to speak and, afterwards, to communicate first with the old de Lacey and only layer with his creator, is extraordinarily eloquent. It throws light on what it means to be human (Simone De Beauvoir), that is to say human not as an essence but rather as a “process that goes through experiences, socialization, reception and retention (or refusal) of human normative assets”. Such a view might explain why the Creature, in spite of all his exertions to be accepted and listened to, reacts with violence once he is classified as “other” and brutally sent away. Not being allowed to utter a word, he is also unable to establish any kind of communication. His body thereby becomes a “spectacle” exposed to the biased gaze of the young De Laceys. The Creature’s process of affirming his own self via his corporeality somehow resonates with what will come to be called the phenomenology of female embodiment, that has been critically discussed and highly conceptualized by feminism [since, at least, Simone De Beauvoir’s account of the way in which women perceive their bodies in such objects for others. According to Bordo, “Feminists first began to develop a critique of the “politics of the body”, however, not in terms of the body as represented (in medical, religious and philosophical discourse, artworks and other cultural “texts”), but in terms of the material body as a site of political struggle. The essential view that set up a binary opposition between body and mind, nature and culture, and that trapped individuals in their own corporeality, affected not only women but also the colonized, disabled and proletarian bodies that came likewise to be prejudicially perceived. Recently the so-called materialist approaches have given the body a newly central role. THE BODY AND SPILLERS Spillers, working on the matriarchal lineage of the African slaves, demonstrates how the enslaved body became a category of otherness and a space where subjectivity was allegedly absent. Analogously, in women’s thought since the 1970s, the body has become the very place of difference, but also the place in which to seek the origins of a new self-definition. Following the line of thought, it comes to mind that the Monster’s body, in its being at once excessive yet invisible (the invisibility that is metaphorically reproduced by his continuous hiding), in its being not born but created, and created not by God but by man, who then rejects him on the basis of his appearance, cannot claim either a maternal or a paternal ancestry. Nonetheless he seems resilient: refusing to be silenced and to stay unrecognizable, he speaks and acts up to the very end of his existence (but will the Monster ever die?). Despite his condition as “unborn”, the Creature affirms a nomadic subjectivity that, if it cannot be acknowledged through love, opts for catastrophic violence. His violence thus turns into the painful metaphor for a collective sense of guilt, what Kipling in quite a different context called “the white man’s burden”, whereby white, male, capitalistic society projects onto the monster its historical responsibilities. By showing how language is connected to both materiality and our personal relationship to others, it brings to the fore a concept of the self as on the one hand closely connected to social norms, but on the other hand able to establish a critical distance to its social environment. Concentrating on language allows the subject to highlight the meaning of “being-with”. By participating in language, and thus in exchange with others, human beings develop a fuller understanding of self. Interestingly, Judith Butler points out how our being in language and in society is necessary for our survival as relational beings. Butler also highlights the violent consequences that might occur following failed recognitions in social and political terms. Mary Shelley shows how the concept of “subject is not a purely philosophical but becomes also a socio-political concept, thus allowing the readers for a broader insight into the structure of society and social inequalities. She also points at, in a very modern way, the troubling concept of recognition, or the act of acknowledging or respecting another being however different as he/she can be. “recognition” has, in fact, both a normative and a psychological dimension. Arguably, if you recognize another person with regard to a certain feature, as an autonomous agent, for example, you do not only admit that she has this feature but you embrace a positive attitude towards her for having this feature. Such recognition implies that you bear obligations to treat her in a certain way, that is, you recognize a specific normative status of the other person. But recognition does not only matter normatively. It is also of psychological importance. Most theories of recognition assume that in order to develop a practical identity, persons fundamentally depend on the feedback of other subjects (and of society as a whole). According to this view, those who fail to experience adequate recognition, will find it much harder to embrace themselves as valuable. Misrecognition thereby hinders or destroys persons’ successful relationship to their selves. In many ways Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble seems to remove not only the distinction between sex and gender replacing them with fluidity and drag, and introducing an immanent critique of notions of identity categories. Thus, is a more general way, undoubtedly challenging the concept of “recognition”. Following this perspective, how do we read the Creature’s longing (a Creature who, interestingly remains unnamed until the end), for some kind of acknowledgement as human being? MODERNITY – FRIEDMAN Susan Friedman: We can have a shift to Modernity any time. It happens when the old values are replaced by new ones. She affirms that modernity can only be viewed plurally, as “modernities”. To Friedman, “modernity is divergent, discrepant, fissured – through time, across space; over various locations, in the same place,” and it “emerges from ruptures within”. Just think of the slave-owner and the slave – they are part of the same modernity but are situated differently within it”. When it comes to women, modernity has often signified for women, as for minority subjects, a condition of subordination since, Friedman concludes, “Women are often held hostage to modernity, functioning as the embodiment of “tradition” as men try to gasp the benefits of modernity for themselves. Modernity bring changes and improvements for elites and retard those whom the society marginalizes. The effects of modernity are uneven. Mary Shelley’s novel succeeds in exposing modernity. In Friedman’s terms, and that makes of Frankenstein “a modern myth” and indeed the very site of modernity. The novel brings to the forefront the fundamental contradictions of its ages, peopled, as it was, by marginalizes subjects that the extensive politics of enclosures, of growing industrialization and colonial expansionism, had reduced to invisibility. Interestingly, a concept that can also be applied to the novel derives from Michael Foucault’s Heterotopia  the concept means “cultural, institutional and discursive transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. HETEROTOPIA: In Frankenstein, Mary consigns to her readers what Foucalt defines as heterotopia, sites of neglect, sites that have been left out by a hegemonic society, and that, nevertheless, mirror the ”fundamental contradictions of that very society”. The hut adjacent to the De Lacey’s cottage, where the Creature finds shelter, represents a heterotopic space of bare survival. The cottage itself – whose inhabitants are all exiles, foreigners and/or deprived of sight – is situated in a wood, at the margin of society. The monster in turn lives there but his true life unfolds in the void, shaped by a hole, namely, by what he can see through a fissure, from which he “steals moments of domesticity, observing, from his hiding place and restrictive perspective, the De Lacey’s daily life. He also inhabits wild lands where his “invisibility” is protracted. VEGETARIANISM that fringed them” (p. 179)—verges on the erotic. Similarly, Walton responds to Frankenstein with an ardor that borders on the homoerotic. To sum up, at every level Victor Frankenstein is engaged upon a rape of nature, a violent penetration and usurpation of the female’s “hiding places,” of the womb. The Madwoman in the Attic by Gilbert, S. and Gubar S. Just as surely as Eve's moral deformity is symbolized by the monster's physical malformation, the monster's physical ugliness represents his social illegitimacy, his bastardy, his namelessness. […] Indeed, in his vile illegitimacy he seems to incarnate that bestial "unnameable" place. And significantly, he is himself as nameless as a woman is in patriarchal society, as nameless as unmarried, illegitimately pregnant Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin may have felt herself to be at the time she wrote Frankenstein. As the sister of illegitimate and therefore nameless Fanny Imlay, for instance, she knew what bastardy meant, and she knew it too as the mother of a premature and illegitimate baby girl who died at the age of two weeks without ever having been given a name. The Female Gothic by Ellen Moers [Ellen Moers coined the term “Female Gothic” in this article from The New York Review of Books. Considering Frankenstein as an example of “the Female Gothic,” she argues that the novel was shaped by Mary Shelley’s experience of womanhood—and especially of childbirth.] What I mean by Female Gothic is easily defined: the work that women writers have done in the literary mode that, since the eighteenth century, we have called the Gothic. But what I mean—or anyone else means—by “the Gothic” is not so easily stated except that it has to do with fear. In Gothic writings fantasy predominates over reality, the strange over the commonplace, and the supernatural over the natural, with one definite auctorial intent: to scare. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in 1818, made over the Gothic novel into what today we call science fiction. Frankenstein brought a new sophistication to literary terror, and it did so without a heroine, without even an important female victim. Paradoxically, however, no other Gothic work by a woman writer, perhaps no other literary work of any kind by a woman, better repays examination in the light of the sex of its author. For Frankenstein is a birth myth, and one that was lodged in the novelist’s imagination, I am convinced, by the fact that she was herself a mother. Pregnant at sixteen, and almost constantly pregnant throughout the following five years; yet not a secure mother, for she lost most of her babies soon after they were born; and not a lawful mother, for she was not married—not at least when, at the age of eighteen, Mary Godwin began to write Frankenstein. So are monsters born. What in fact has the experience of giving birth to do with women’s literature? In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries very few important women writers, except for Mary Shelley, bore children; most of them, in England and America, were spinsters and virgins. Mary Shelley was a unique case, in literature as in life. She brought birth to fiction not as realism but as Gothic fantasy, and thus contributed to Romanticism a myth of genuine originality. She invented the mad scientist who locks himself in his laboratory and secretly, guiltily, works at creating human life, only to find that he has made a monster. When Victor abandons the newborn monster is where Mary Shelley’s book is most interesting, powerful and feminine: in the motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences. Most of the novel can be said to deal with the retribution visited upon monster and creator for deficient infant care. Frankenstein seems to be distinctly a woman’s mythmaking on the subject of birth precisely because its emphasis is not upon what precedes birth, not upon birth itself, but upon what follow birth: the trauma of the afterbirth. Fear and guilt, depression and anxiety are commonplace reaction to the birth of a baby, and well within the normal range of experience. Bu more deeply rooted in our cultural mythology, and certainly in our literature, are the happy maternal reactions: ecstasy, a sense of fulfilment, and the rush of nourishing love which sweep over the new mother when she first holds her baby in her arms. The major Romantic and minor Gothic tradition to which Frankenstein should have belonged was the literature of the overreacher: the superman who breaks through normal human limitations to defy the rules of society and infringe upon the realm of God. Mary Shelley’s overreacher is different than the ones of Byron, Balzac, Lewis. Frankenstein’s exploration of the forbidden boundaries of human science does not cause the prolongation and extension of his own life, but the creation of a new one. He defies mortality not by living forever, but by giving birth. Birth is in Frankenstein a hideous thing, even before there is a monster. “To examine the causes of life we must first have recourse to death”, he says. He collects bones and other human parts from the slaughterhouse and the dissecting room and then sticks them together in a frame of gigantic size he calls “my workshop of filthy creation”. Mary Godwin sailed into teenage motherhood without any of the financial or social or familial supports that made bearing and rearing children a relaxed experience for the normal middle-class woman of her day (as Jane Austen, for example, described her). She was an unwed mother, responsible for breaking up the marriage of a young woman just as much a mother as she. The father whom she adored broke furiously with her when she eloped; and Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother whose memory she revered, and whose books she was rereading throughout her teenage years, had died in childbirth—died giving birth to Mary herself. Surely no outside influence need be sought to explain Mary Shelley’s fantasy of the newborn as at once monstrous agent of destruction and piteous victim of parental abandonment. “I, the miserable and the abandoned,” cries the monster at the end of Frankenstein, “I am an abortion to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on…. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless…. I have devoted my creator to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin.” The Caged Monster: The Absent Female in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Cherie Woodhouse I suggest that it is through Frankenstein’s subversive narrative, that the burgeoning female power can be found. Enforcing the female position as subordinate from the very outset, Mary Shelley orchestrated a three-volume novel from the perspective of male characters. All the women of the novel are silenced: 1- Margaret, Walton’ sister, is told the story by his brother through his letters. Readers see only Walton’s words; Margaret appears mute. This lack of a voice from Margaret reflects the suppression of women within a male-dominated society where they are forced to be creatures who are present but absent, seen but not heard. But trough her absence, Margaret reveals her power. The fates of Walton, Frankenstein and the creature are all in the hands of a woman. It is to Margaret Saville that the whole story is recounted, and it is her choice as to what to do with it. By documenting his tale in this epistolary style, the power has unconsciously shifted from the active narration of Walton, to the silence of his sister. She is the hugely important, yet ultimately absent editor of the tale. 2- The female creature is destroyed before she was given a chance to exist, becoming a powerful suggestion of what it means to be a woman living within the confines of the patriarchy; to have her voice and untapped potential torn away. With a life made absent before it had begun, the reader is left to wonder what sort of creature she would have been. Frankenstein is horrified by the thought of a powerful, independent woman, able to comprehend her own existence away from the silent shadows where she is thrust by the dominant patriarchy. He worries that, ‘she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate. Just as she begins to be partially animated in the mind of the reader, the creature is violently destroyed by Frankenstein in a display of male dominance over the female. Here, Shelley uses purposeful, violently sexual language, revealing a patriarchal fear of female sexuality, of a woman who is, ‘sexually liberated, free to choose her own life, her own sexual partner and to propagate at will. 3- Frankenstein’s mother, Caroline is also never allowed to become fully formed in the mind of the reader. Describing his mother, Frankenstein talks of her virtues, her courage but he fails to offer any physical hints as to her appearance. This lack of description leaves Caroline as an adumbrate character, an outline of a person who is just a shadow, ghost-like and absent to the reader. This choice appears to adhere to the patriarchal stereotype that women should be virtuous, angelic and seen but not heard. However, I believe that through her absence, the character’s power transcends the few short pages in which she is mentioned, controlling much of the story itself. It is her death that drives Frankenstein to experiment with reanimation. 4- The patriarchal stereotype of purity and virtue, described by Frankenstein as the angelic force within his mother Caroline is passed on to the young Elizabeth Lavenza, from whom she contracts the Scarlet Fever that will kill her. Written by Shelley as dutiful, patient and loving, Elizabeth, like Caroline, is seen as perfect and virtuous by Frankenstein, who calls her ‘the purest creature on earth’. By labelling her as solely angelic, he suppresses and makes absent her natural sexual feelings and desires. Focusing on her relationship with Frankenstein, it could be suggested that he suffers from Genophobia, a fear of sexual intimacy. Here, I would argue, Shelley is subverting the patriarchal stereotype of the female, showing that Elizabeth, and women, are not simply pretty and silent possessions of poor and unhappy. A sense of guilt then comes over him, and he starts to leave firewood in front of their doorway in an effort to help them. The creature also starts to slowly understand basic language from the cottagers. He learns that they are called by the names Felix, Agatha, and De Lacey. However, as he comes to admire them, he also starts to question his own solitude. That is, until he observes his reflection in a puddle and is, for the first time, made aware of his disfigured appearance. Afterwards, he realizes that he cannot reveal himself to the cottagers, and continues to watch them from afar. Soon, the cottagers welcome a woman named Safie into their home. The creature, at this time, can only notice the change in mood of the household upon Safie‟s arrival. However, Safie does not speak the same language as the cottagers. Felix begins to teach her the language by using texts like Constantin-François de Volney‟s Ruins of Empires, while the creature silently observes and learns for himself. After learning the language of the cottagers, it becomes clear to the creature that Safie is Felix‟s lover. As the creature conceives, Safie‟s Turkish father was prosecuted by the Turkish government for a crime he did not commit. Felix attempted to help Safie‟s father during which time he met Safie and fell in love with her. When he assisted her father in escaping his imprisonment, however, Felix is caught and his family is banished from France, sending them into poverty. Through language, the creature is able to understand much about how people (specifically, families) interact with one another. However, by recognizing and admiring the benefits of communal relationships as represented by the cottagers, he becomes more and more aware of his own isolation, causing him to feel increasingly rejected and alone. As the creature seeks the same communion that he observes among the cottagers, he wanders around looking for his creator, hoping that Victor will accept him. During his journey, though, he finds pages of Victor‟s journal that convey his disgust with the creature upon its birth. Disappointed, the creature then decides that he will look to the compassionate cottagers for approval, and that he will do so by first attempting to communicate with the blind De Lacey. Using language, he assumes, will finally allow him to communicate and connect with another human being by establishing common ground between them. When he puts his well-developed plan into action, the elderly De Lacey responds positively, and continues to engage in conversation with the creature for some time. However, as soon as Agatha, Felix, and Safie return to find the disfigured creature, they react immediately out of fear, threatening and banishing him again into a solitary existence. The incident infuriates the creature. He is now aware that despite his ability to establish connection and communicate with others, he is still an outcast because of his appearance. He is angered at the human race as a whole and seeks revenge, more specifically, on the human who created him. On his way to Geneva in search of Victor, the creature sees a young girl drowning, and still manages to feel empathy for her. He saves her life, at which point a man who had been looking for her shoots him, assuming that he attacked her. The constant abuse and rejection exhibited by others (despite the creature‟s efforts to be kind) continues to produce hatred and anger within him. Along his search for Victor, he comes across young William, and is made aware that he is indeed Victor‟s brother. When he realizes the relation, he strangles the child to death, and plants the photo of Caroline Beaufort in the sleeping Justine‟s pocket. His explanation incriminates Victor as the source of all the destruction that the creature has caused in Victor‟s life. He is honest with Victor about the killings, hoping that Victor will take responsibility and be able to identify with his circumstances enough to fulfill a simple request. He asks that Victor create a female mate for him so that he no longer has to live in solitude and therefore, no longer has the desire to kill. Victor reluctantly agrees to the request, though he is fearful of the potential consequences of creating yet another creature like the first. Even though he does agree, he puts off the creation for as long as possible in avoidance of the result. Victor has extreme anxiety as he debates creating the second creature. Alphonse wonders if his disoriented state stems from his unhappiness, as he is soon to be married to Elizabeth. In response, Victor expresses that his only source of happiness is in knowing that he and Elizabeth will soon wed. However, he asks to go to London before the wedding takes place. His father agrees, sending Clerval along with him, and he soon sets off to begin his work. After some time passes, Victor grows increasingly paranoid about his lurking creation. As he assembles the new female creature, he has the realization that he is also creating a possibility for procreation between the two creatures which could produce of a “race of devils” (Shelley 144). In the midst of this realization, the creature appears to him. Victor is then overcome by his fear and anxiety, and impulsively destroys the unfinished mate. The creature becomes enraged and vows that he will dedicate the rest of his days toward seeking vengeance on Victor. He leaves Victor to his paranoia, and promises that he will be with Victor again on his wedding night. In the next scene, Victor takes a row boat into the middle of the ocean and dumps the remains of his incomplete creation. He then falls asleep, and wakes up to a group of townspeople who suspect him of a murder that took place the night before. When the body is revealed to him, he sees that it is Henry Clerval, who he knows has been taken as the creature‟s latest victim. Victor is held in prison for some time. While in prison, he again becomes dangerously ill. After several months, Victor is finally found innocent. However, he continues to suffer knowing that he must now re-enter the world in which his angry creation awaits him. While he is imprisoned, Elizabeth grows increasingly concerned about Victor. She assumes that his frequent illness is arising as a result of his being forced to marry her, and worries that he is possibly in love with someone else. Victor responds reassuringly, telling her that he cannot wait to be back in Geneva and for them to finally wed. All the while, Victor remembers the words of his creation. He anticipates that he will confront the creature on the night of the wedding, and that they will engage in a fight after which a winner can be named, and the looming conflict finally resolved. When he arrives back in Geneva, arrangements for a speedy wedding are made, and the ceremony takes place. Afterward, Victor and Elizabeth head to a cottage nearby for their honeymoon. Victor continues to anticipate the attack. He advises Elizabeth to go to sleep soon after they arrive, as he does not want her to lay eyes on the creature. She agrees, and Victor begins to search for the creature, prepared to face him. However, while he is looking around the cottage for the creature, he suddenly hears Elizabeth scream, and immediately realizes what has happened. He realizes that the creature did not plan to come after him, and that Elizabeth, as the woman he loves, was the intended victim all along. The creature sought vengeance on Victor by subjecting him to the same isolated existence that Victor has subjected him to by refusing to create a mate for him. Just as he guesses, Elizabeth has been murdered, and the creature flees. After relaying the news of Elizabeth‟s death to Alphonse, Alphonse becomes consumed by grief and dies just days later. Consumed by his own grief and guilt, Victor then decides to turn himself in and finally confesses that he created a monster that is responsible for the recent deaths. However, no one believes him, and he dedicates the rest of his days to looking for the creature until he can destroy it. Victor‟s narrative now arrives in the present. He explains how he ended up where Walton finds him. He explains that as he hunts the creature, he finds clues that have been left for him as if the creature experiences pleasure in being chased. On this note, his story ends. Walton now reflects on his encounter with Victor. He writes to his sister that he believes Victor‟s story to be true, and that he wishes that he had known Victor when he was young as he described in his story, as opposed to now when he is very sickly and approaching death. Soon after, Victor dies. On the night of his death, Walton hears a strange noise coming from the room where Victor‟s body lays. When he looks inside, he sees the creature crying over Victor‟s corpse. The creature talks to Walton, telling him about his life and how he regrets becoming evil. Furthermore, he says that he too is ready to die now that Victor is dead. His death, however, is not detailed. At the end of the novel, he simply vanishes in the darkness.