Madeline Simon
Cline
Essay #3
ENG 102
October 10, 2011
“Frankenstein”
There are thousands of horror novels in the world. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley is one of them, the story has its fair share of controversy and many topics that could be twisted, discussed and argued about. The story is touching and gives a feeling that not all monster, horror novels have. “Frankenstein” is eye opening to a woman’s perspective of life, birth and breakdowns. With the twist of a man creating a “monster” it truly shows what happens regularly with new mothers. Mary Shelley while writing the book was going through great amounts of drama, which helped make the book so outrageous for Shelley’s time. The frustration and worry when things don’t exactly go right, Shelley brings it out in the most odd way.
The novel “Frankenstein” did not in fact come across as something that was an exciting sounding book. As the reader, it was very difficult to really get into it and really truly enjoy myself. There really weren’t any themes or motifs that stuck out until I got into reading the modern criticisms responses. A criticism in particular really brought attention while reading through it, Ellen Moers “Female Gothic: The monster’s Mother”. In her critique she discusses female gothic, how it was what most women would write about when writing about monsters or some type of scary motif. Mores discusses many facts but focuses mostly on how Shelley’s life drama with birth, children, family and femininity formed the book and made it come to life.
The novel really changed the future of science fiction. According to Mores, “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in 1818, made over the Gothic novel into what today we call science fiction. ” (Pg.216 Paragraph 3) When reading the novel a sense of uncomfortable insecurity really overwhelms one’s thoughts. Victor Frankenstein clearly didn’t understand what he got himself into when creating this monster made of random, multiple corps. As it came to life, Frankenstein became more and more scared of what is truly happening before his own eyes. Although he never names the monster and eventually the monster starts to hurt and kill his creators loved ones. The majority of this story is unreal and starts to stimulate the imagination.
The main part of “Frankenstein” focuses on things that happen on a day-to-day basis for both women and men in the early 1800’s. Shelley brings a very gory birth into it all and portrays it on what could possibly be the truth of birth itself; or at least to what Shelley goes through. Ellen really focuses on that in most of her critique, “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.” (Pg, 216 Paragraph 3).
Shelley’s novel was so different and unique of what most other women during that time wrote about. The tension in the story line was so different from what everyone was used to. It had opened eyes to a new way of gore with different twists of what comes across as pregnancy and birth. Ellen states facts of how things used to be, “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. With the coming of Naturalism late in the century, and the lifting of the Victorian taboo against writing about physical sexuality (including pregnancy and labor). ” (Pg, 217 Paragraph 1) Which brings back the fact that the novel “Frankenstein” was so focused on what Shelley was going through. Convinced that Shelley probably had her fair share of problems with birth, life and death and quiet frankly it shows strongly throughout the storyline. Once again Mores brought to life more meaning to the storyline saying, “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. ” (Pg, 217 Paragraph 2)
Throughout the story one may question continuously what might this story relate to birth, life and at the same time a gory horror novel? It is simple Frankenstein creates this form of life, ugly, gigantic, nameless monster. Frankenstein is in such shock and disgusted that he doesn’t even give the poor monster a name. Therefore, the most heartless thing he could possibly do. “Most of the novel, roughly two of its three volumes, 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 follows birth: the trauma of the afterbirth. ” , Mores strongly states. (Pg 218 Paragraph 1) It is nothing to fool with, birth and the reactions to it. Shelley has her way of really morphing something that in real life is so scary and horrid and creating it in a different perspective; yet having the same scary, horrid feeling.
In reality Shelley’s novel brings her own personal life into this Female gothic, horror story. It boggles the mind thinking maybe; just maybe Shelley felt the same way when dealing with problems that really happened to her. Mores has endless amounts of helpful facts and thoughts to really help ones imagination render the story into something so much more meaningful, “But more mundane is Mary Shelley’s concern with the emotions surrounding the parent-child and child-parent relationship. Here her intention to underline the birth myth in Frankenstein becomes most evident, quiet apart from biographical evidence about its author.” (Pg, 224 Paragraph 1) Life, death, heartbreak and denial affect the smallest details in a novel, bringing it to a remarkable horror story that will be forever known as “Frankenstein” .
WORKS CITED
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: A Norton Critical Edition. ed. J. Paul Hunter. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996
