“Workshop of filthy creation”:
Muddled gender and bad art in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Taryn MacKinney
ENGL-102.001, Monsters in Film in Literature
Fall 2015, Professor Yang
In her book Monstrous Imagination, Huet outlines two phases in literary history. In the first, mothers were believed capable of creating monstrous progeny from imagination – or more appropriately, from a skill-less mimicry of reality. In the second, Romantic writers redefined imagination as a “masculine attribute” divorced from the mother (Huet 8). However, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein straddles the line between the two theories, particularly in the scene of the monster’s creation. Here, Frankenstein proves himself, as monsters’ mothers did, a bad artist – and yet, …show more content…
For one, Frankenstein’s narrative hints at the process of childbirth. While he worked, “…the moon gazed on [his] midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, [he] pursued nature to her hiding-places” (Shelley 314). The word ‘labor’ connotes not only toil, but the labor of childbirth, an image that’s enhanced by his “unrelaxed and breathless” state. He claims also that “[n]o one can conceive” the feelings that motivated him, which – when ‘conceive’ is interpreted sexually – emphasizes his own reproductive capability (314). The process takes a toll on his physical body, too, as pregnancy does a woman’s (“My cheek had grown pale with study…,” page 314). Perhaps most importantly, Frankenstein actually expects a human child as a product of his labors, just as a pregnant woman does, thus adapting the traditionally feminine role into his masculine one (“No father should claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs,” page 314, emphasis added). Given that he’s constructing an eight-foot-tall man (a description that precedes the mention of a child), Frankenstein’s analogy seems all the more …show more content…
Regardless, he certainly resists categorization, and the impact is significant, as the cause and creator behind the monster’s existence is effectively de-gendered. Frankenstein may be a man, and a Romantic myth at that, but his maleness is no longer a defining, causal factor in his creation of the monster; similarly, Frankenstein may be mother-like in his imitative creation, but the relevance of his femaleness is muddled. With gender stripped away, the creation of the monster has neither man nor woman to blame. So, an unusual question arises: who made the monster, and
Muddled gender and bad art in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Taryn MacKinney
ENGL-102.001, Monsters in Film in Literature
Fall 2015, Professor Yang
In her book Monstrous Imagination, Huet outlines two phases in literary history. In the first, mothers were believed capable of creating monstrous progeny from imagination – or more appropriately, from a skill-less mimicry of reality. In the second, Romantic writers redefined imagination as a “masculine attribute” divorced from the mother (Huet 8). However, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein straddles the line between the two theories, particularly in the scene of the monster’s creation. Here, Frankenstein proves himself, as monsters’ mothers did, a bad artist – and yet, …show more content…
For one, Frankenstein’s narrative hints at the process of childbirth. While he worked, “…the moon gazed on [his] midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, [he] pursued nature to her hiding-places” (Shelley 314). The word ‘labor’ connotes not only toil, but the labor of childbirth, an image that’s enhanced by his “unrelaxed and breathless” state. He claims also that “[n]o one can conceive” the feelings that motivated him, which – when ‘conceive’ is interpreted sexually – emphasizes his own reproductive capability (314). The process takes a toll on his physical body, too, as pregnancy does a woman’s (“My cheek had grown pale with study…,” page 314). Perhaps most importantly, Frankenstein actually expects a human child as a product of his labors, just as a pregnant woman does, thus adapting the traditionally feminine role into his masculine one (“No father should claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs,” page 314, emphasis added). Given that he’s constructing an eight-foot-tall man (a description that precedes the mention of a child), Frankenstein’s analogy seems all the more …show more content…
Regardless, he certainly resists categorization, and the impact is significant, as the cause and creator behind the monster’s existence is effectively de-gendered. Frankenstein may be a man, and a Romantic myth at that, but his maleness is no longer a defining, causal factor in his creation of the monster; similarly, Frankenstein may be mother-like in his imitative creation, but the relevance of his femaleness is muddled. With gender stripped away, the creation of the monster has neither man nor woman to blame. So, an unusual question arises: who made the monster, and