Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and, in particular, it looks at how has come to be regarded as connecting important, but widely disparate, elements of 19th century culture in Victorian England. It discusses how, with many apparently conflicting themes such as the domestic ideology of the bourgeoisie family and parenting, on the one hand, and fear of pregnancy, childbirth, and forbidden emotions ranging from the desire to play God and incest on the other, Shelley's "Frankenstein" is often seen as a complex mosaic, which lends itself to varying interpretations. It also explores whether the adoption of such a contextual framework helps to clarify the divisions in Shelley's work between conformist and challenging views of gender- balanced roles both in society and within the make-up of the individual personality.

From the Paper:

"The existence of a patriarchal culture during Mary Shelley's lifetime has been well established in a wide body of work in the fields of sociology, cultural studies, and literature. The study of such works helps understand the historical antecedents of a patriarchal culture and the forces in operation during the time of Shelley's writing Frankenstein. Masculinity and femininity has, over generations, been defined and shaped by men through the medium of patriarchal culture. Further, the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution accelerated the masculinization of culture due to the exponential increase in the production of knowledge by men and the multiplication of cultural codes and languages written in male script (Aker & Morrow, p. 25)."

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