Analysis Of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein - 1527 Words

Shelley s narrative is seen to symbolize romantic fears, offering a tale of certain demise, one that gives technology negative connotations in the form of the creature whom is represented as an outcast of society. To emphasise this, the sublime settings in the text, provide a space where the marginalised can be heard, however, for in contrast to the power of beauty which works to contain and maintain social distinctions, the sublime in Frankenstein opens the way for the excluded to challenge the dominant discourse and this appears to be one of many things the creature substantially appears to represent.1 There is a critique of beauty in Frankenstein on anaesthetic grounds as well as what is ethical. The theoretical foundation for which†¦show more content†¦The theoretical foundation for which can be found in Mary Shelley s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft s book on the Vindication of the Rights of Women 4. Her mother s influence appears to have a significant impact on Shelley s work of Frankenstein and should not be underestimated as they are clearly marked contrast to the closely circumscribed expectations of the women figures in Frankenstein. Although these portrayals have been seen as indicating Shelley s retreat from her mother s radical status, it is more likely that the limitations shared by all the women figures indicate a deliberate artistic decision through which she means to emphasize the often implicit but crushing weight exercised by patriarchal authority in the novel5.There are two further areas in which the novel Frankenstein seems to register Mary Wollstonecraft s influence on her daughter s thinking. The first is in the extensive record of travel in the novel, part of which is filtered through Mary Shelley s first published work, A History of a Six Week s Tour6, an account that in its discreet way appears to emulate her mother s masterful Letters Written during a Short Residence in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.7 The second influence is more direct and telling. There exists no closer model in literature for the existential isolation of Victor Frankenstein s Creature than Wollstonecraft s haunting portrait of the orderly in the insane asylum to which