Feminist Theory (with Special Focus On Frankenstein) (special thanks to Allison Parish for this information) General Definition:

Feminism is the theory that men and women should be equal politically, socially, and economically. There are many variations on this general idea, including Amazon feminism, Cultural Feminism, Eco-feminism, Material Feminism, Moderate Feminism, Pop-feminism, and Radical Feminism. Amazon Feminism - A type of feminism dedicated to the image of the female hero in Greek mythology and physical equality between males and females. Cultural Feminism - A theory that there are fundamental personality differences between men and women, and that womens differences are special and should be celebrated. Eco-feminism - A theory that rests on the basic principal that patriarchal philosophies are harmful to women, children, and other living things. Material feminism - A movement of the late 19th century to liberate women by improving their material condition. This movement revolved around taking the burden off women in regards to housework, cooking, and other traditionally female jobs. Moderate Feminism - This type of feminism tends to question the need for further effort in the feminism effort. Pop-Feminism - This type of feminism degrades men in all manners and glorifies women. Radical Feminism - This type of feminism questions why women must assume certain roles based on their biology, just as it questions why men must assume certain roles based on their biology. Feminism in Relation to Frankenstein Mary Shelleys mother was a huge feminist. She died eleven days after Mary was born from an infection contracted during labor. She wrote several articles and books voicing her views on feminism, one of which was A Vindication of the Rights of Women. After her mothers death, Mary developed an unhealthy attachment to her mothers grave where she often read and wrote. Mary often read the books her mother wrote and idolized the mother whom she never knew, which is believed to have had an effect on her writing.
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Mary experienced many other tragedies during her lifetime, including the suicide of her half-sister Fanny Imlay in 1816 and the suicide of Marys husbands wife, Harriet, just weeks later. Mary gave birth to four children, three of which died in infancy. Despite these tragedies Mary continued to write, but not without effect on her writing. Some feminist groups believe the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is a result of the authors simultaneous attract ion and repulsion toward motherhood. Others believe that the link between creation, birth, and death in Frankenstein is a result of Marys real-life experience with pregnancy, labor, maternity, and death, through the death of her mother and the death of her young children. Victor Frankenstein has even been said to play the role of the mother who neglects her child and must suffer the consequences of her actions through retribution upon the monster and creator for insufficient care. When reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, one cannot help but notice that the women characters seem to have little substance compared to the male characters. This may have been caused by the time period in which she wrote: one in which females were considered inferior to males. This difference between the sexes can be looked at using a variety of different perspectives. Johanna M. Smith, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, discusses this issue using feminist eyes in her essay entitled "'Cooped up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein." The main points in Professor Smith's essay are that the female characters are there only to reflect the male characters, and that the Frankenstein family has a weird style of living, which she describes as a "bookkeeping mentality" (Smith 279). Smith begins her essay by looking at the historical factors that may have contributed to this seemingly sexist book. Shelley, writing in the first half of the 19th Century, was in a period in which a woman "was conditioned to think she needed a man's help" (Smith 275). In the novel itself, no women speak directly. The book has three basic narrators: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein's monster. The female characters are very weak in this novel, especially Elizabeth, Victor's cousin/fianc (no they aren't from Arkansas). She is portrayed as the perfect woman, especially after Victor's mother, Caroline dies. She takes the place of the mother figure in the household. But just like all the female characters in the story, her character has little substance. Victor's character is described in detail, as is that of the monster, and Henry Clerval. When Henry gets killed, sympathy is really felt toward Victor, because he has
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just lost his lifetime friend. When Elizabeth is murdered, the reader finds it hard to connect with what Frankenstein is feeling. Elizabeth (and the other main female characters: Justine and Caroline) are there to reflect the men characters. Professor Smith states in her essay that "women function not in their own right but rather as signals of and conduits for men's relations with other men" (283). This is especially clear when the monster kills Elizabeth on their wedding night. The monster is upset with Victor, so instead of hurting him, he kills his wife. Elizabeth is used as a sort of ruler to measure the relationship between Victor and his monster. Professor Smith's two main arguments both involve the relationships in the novel. In her second argument, she states that the Frankenstein family has a "bookkeeping mentality" about them. "Gratitude, no matter how heartfelt, implies obligation, which in turn implies the power of the person to whom one is grateful or obligated. The insistence on gratitude and obligation induces a bookkeeping mentality that permeates all the relations in this novel" (Smith 279). Frankenstein states that "gratitude assisted the development of love" (Smith 43). There are many examples of this debt/obligation mindset permeating the novel. When Henry nurses Victor back from the flu, Victor's first response is "How shall I ever repay you?" (Smith 63). Professor Smith proves her arguments through well thought out arguments and concrete examples from the text. She has many minor points, but the two mentioned in this paper are her two main ideas. Johanna M. Smith, the editor of this text, as well as one of the essayists, brings the reader into another perspective of critically analyzing this novel. She views it through the eyes of a feminist. Frankenstein and Gothic literature The problem of lecturing Frankenstein The pervasiveness of the Frankenstein myth in 20th-century culture (especially in film; see Terminator, The Incredible Hulk); the overwriting of the novel with its mythic refiguration. Origins: the Jewish myth of the golem. The appropriation of Mary Shelley by feminist criticism. The social context
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The historical context to the nineteenth century, as a time very aware of upheaval and change. Important factors include: - the French Revolution, and its effect on notions of class and identity; - Darwinism and his effect on religious thought; - the Industrial Revolution, with its ambivalence towards technology as both exciting and dangerous, and its profound effect on social class with the possibility for acquired rather than inherited wealth; - Colonialism, and the British Empire's expanding wealth and influence; - the influence of Romanticism as a unified intellectual movement. Gothic literature and Romanticism Neo-classicism and the Romantic reaction against social order and rationality. Gothicism as a lunatic fringe version of Romanticism's celebration of the emotional (terror as the most extreme form of emotion) Common themes: Nature, the emotions, the exotic, medieval nostalgia, a celebration of the self. The Gothic novel The function of Gothic as a cult literature of the late 18th and early 19th century A popular, romance form - stylised, non-realistic, idealised, with an adventure format Gothic as an extreme form of romance - the imagination run wild. The implications of Gothic as mostly a pulp genre, the equivalent of the modern horror movie. Jane Austen's parody in Northanger Abbey of the titillation of the "horrid". Some characteristics of Gothic MELODRAMA - stereotype, moral polarisation, one-dimensionality, excess. EXOTICISM - wild/remote locations, other cultures such as the Oriental. TRANSGRESSION - fear of barbarism, of unleashing human passion beyond social constraings. Gothic's operation as a literature of the unconscious, of transgressive desires. ALIENATION - the genre's interest in identity and subjectivity, but of an alienated self, set apart from society. LECTURE 2: Frankenstein as a novel of identity Romanticism and selfhood Shelley's position firmly within the Romantic movement The importance of the Romantic emphasis on the self as distinct from society
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The exaggeration of Romance's sense of individuality into alienation in gothic. Selfhood as a process of deliberate artistic construction. The distinction between the physical and spiritual selves. The family in Frankenstein The family as a representation of society. Physical and metaphorical orphans: the theme of alienation from the family. Excessive reactions against alienation: the theme of incest. The influence of Milton's Paradise Lost - the Promethean myth: the symbolic process of stealing fire from the gods, and its invocation of themes of pride, forbidden knowledge and the over-reaching of boundaries. - The Monster's attempt to establish an identity through Paradise Lost - the opposite archetypes of Adam or the fallen angel. - Miltonian archetypes as patriarchal symbols. The strong/interesting individuals are male, and woman is the agent of the fall. LECTURE 3: Frankenstein as a woman's text Gothic literature and feminism Gothic operates as a genre with particular significance for women: it has a tendency towards female writers and readership, but also embodies a peculiarly patriarchal nightmare in which violence is continually enacted on the female body. - The importance of Mary Shelley's identity as the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. She was a woman living in a tradition of literary women who explicitly criticised patriarchy; it is therefore logical to look for criticism of Gothic and patriarchy in Frankenstein. - The maleness of Frankenstein is a particular problem here: within the Miltonian archetypes, men are dominant, women are weak and passive playthings and possessions, or self-sacrificing mother/nurture figures. - Shelley's use of the exaggerated misogyny of the genre can be seen as being in many ways subversive and critical. Birth in Frankenstein Birth and procreation are concepts important for women and are central themes in the novel. - Mary Shelley's own experience of difficult pregnancies while writing offers a psychoanalytic perspective on some of the book's events.
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- Also important is the contrast between Romantic ideals of spiritual/artistic creation and the gross physicality of the body in the novel. - The implications of Shelley as woman writer who usurps the male (spiritual) act of creation - The horror of Frankenstein is Dr. Frankenstein's appropriation of the intrinsically female birth process, and his eradication of the need for women. - Nature is presented as a feminine principle penetrated by the male, but has the power to punish the transgressive penetrator. The monstrous and the female other The female operates as the other to the patriarchal self. This is a transgressive other: the figure of Eve typfies all women as fallen. The novel deals with the notion of female otherness in various implicit ways. - Both Frankenstein and Walden are also Eve figures in their reaching after forbidden knowledge. - The monstrous other comes to stand for the feminine other - the monster himself is a feminised figure. - The novel thus uses its patriarchal gothic structures subversively - the horror elements of the genre energise an attack on patriarchy. LECTURE 4: Frankenstein as science fiction text Science fiction and Gothic Frankenstein is often claimed as the original science fiction novel. - Aldiss in Ch. 1 of Trillion Year Spree argues that in fact all sf functions in the gothic mode. He argues that the genres have numerous points in common: - both are social genres, concerned with the individual's place in society - both are interested in the distant and unearthly - both depend on a horrid revelation at the heart of the tale (I'd disagree here only some kinds of sf do this). But there is also a fundamental opposition between sf and gothic, in that they represent the opposing ideas of the rational and the irrational. - Unlike gothic, sf projects the boundaries of knowledge but does not necessarily violate them. There are other obvious intersections between the genres: - both are popular genres - both are marginal, regarded as non-literary - both tend to follow an adventure/discovery format - both have an interest in identity and humanity - both tend to marginalise/objectify women.
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Frankenstein and science Shelley demonstrates an overt interest in science for its own sake. - Much of this reflects the context of Industrial Revolution, and the simultaneous excitement and threat of new technology - The danger of science is a classic sf theme, and here Gothic provides the framework and tone for the horror of failed science, the experiment gone wrong. - This is in many ways opposed to Shelley's Romantic influences - the Romantics tend to insist on the value of emotion rather than rationality, and thus reject the materialism of science. Scientist as Promethean figure The Promethean myth offers a paradigm for the self-destruction of the scientist through reaching after forbidden knowledge. - The novel also deals in subtext with the Promethean myth of Faust, although in inverted terms: Shelley's painstaking denial of magic and rewriting magic as science explicitly assaults the Faustian archetypes. - Her "modern Prometheus" is literally that - an updating of magical to the science lab. Science and identity: what is humanity? Frankenstein's issues of constructedness, and exploration of the nature of humanity are precursors to modern sf's aliens, robots and AIs - the novel has become a paradigm for explorations of identity under science. Science and feminism Shelley's novel is particularly interesting in that it uses science as way to think about issues of sexuality and motherhood. - This can be contrasted to more modern sf in which science is seen as having the potential to release women from biological determinism. - In Shelley's view, however, technological birth is monstrous, a further scientific appropriation of women that is doomed to disaster. One cannot deny the influence of Frankenstein on modern sf, but in fact the Gothic implications of the novel are probably not as important as Shelley's interest in science for its own sake. While the Gothic mode has inspired a powerful image of science as threatening, Shelley's exploration of the relationship between science and the individual is probably more influential than Gothic itself.