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Passive Angels and Miserable Devils Mary Shelley´S Frankenstein from a Historical, Political and Gender Perspective

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Passive Angels and Miserable Devils Mary Shelley´S Frankenstein from a Historical, Political and Gender Perspective 2008:057 BACHELOR THESIS Passive Angels and Miserable Devils Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein from a Historical, Political and Gender Perspective Pernilla Fredriksson Luleå University of Technology Bachelor thesis English Department of Language and Culture 2008:057 - ISSN: 1402-1773 - ISRN: LTU-CUPP--08/057--SE Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 2 Acting a Novel The Life of the Author of Frankenstein ............................................................ 4 My Hideous Phantom The Novel ............................................................................................ 15 The Angel in the House Male and Female in Frankenstein ..................................................... 23 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 33 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 35 Introduction Frankenstein and his creature are known to most people of our time. Still, not many know that the famous monster and his creator have their origin in a novel written by a young woman in the beginning of the nineteenth century. A challenge to write a ghost story 1 was the beginning of what came to be Mary Shelley’s most famous novel. Frankenstein, Or; The Modern Prometheus was written by a girl in a time when women were not supposed to be political actors. Yet, Mary Shelley filled her novel with political implications and created a story so intriguing it gained mythical status, and became recreated in many forms, in different types of media. Mary lived an unusual life for a woman in the nineteenth century. She was the daughter of the radicals Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and she married another such; Percy Bysshe Shelley. To write and to promote political views seem to have been a part of her upbringing, and something she continued with throughout her life. When Frankenstein is looked upon with Mary’s background and the political turbulence of the time in mind, the young author’s ability to create such a complex and fascinating novel becomes less surprising. This essay aims to examine if Mary Shelley depicted male and female characters in Frankenstein with a political agenda in mind. The characters will be compared as a means to determine if specific traits can be observed for each respective sex, and their characteristics will be discussed with the aim of revealing possible political implications. The first chapter, Acting a Novel , will present a background to Mary’s political views. She grew up in conflicted times and was inspired by her radical parents and husband; all prominent writers. Mary Wollstonecraft died after giving birth to Mary, therefore Mary knew her mother only through her writings. It seems that from an early age Mary was influenced by her parents’ political works, and held both of them in high regard. Neither Wollstonecraft nor Godwin were well looked upon by the English society because of their Jacobin views, and in Wollstonecraft’s case, her liberal life style for a women in the eighteenth century. Mary also made choices unusual for a woman of her time, and suffered public hostility as a result. The second chapter, My Hideous Phantom , is an introduction to the novel which became a myth. Frankenstein and his creature have been examined and analyzed in many different ways. There are numerous interpretations of Mary Shelley’s text, the most important of which are presented in this essay to provide the reader with an introduction to the novel and to some of 1 Sjöblad, Christina, et al. Editors I lärdomens trädgård Festskrift till Louise Vinge . Litteratur Teater Film, Nya Serien 15. (Lund: Lund University Press, 1996.) 154(f) 2 the possible political interpretations. Attempts have been made to correlate Frankenstein to the events of the time and to Mary’s own life. It can be seen that Mary was inspired by both of her parents’ works when she wrote Frankenstein . The third chapter, The Angel in the House , contains a comparison between the male and female characters. All major characters are included in the evaluation which determines the specifics for males and females in the novel. The characters and their different qualities are examined, and the comparison reveals how distinctive traits are distributed between the male and female characters. It will be determined how this depiction of the male and female correlates to what we learned about Mary in the first chapter. The essay concludes with a discussion of the possible interpretations of the result in relation to Mary’s life and the intentions behind the novel. 3 Acting a Novel 2 The Life of the Author of Frankenstein The time in which Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was born was a time of revolution and change. During the period between 1785-1830, England like other European countries, industrialized, and gradually changed from an agricultural society into a modern industrial nation. Large land owners bought up land, and increased the underclass of landless poor. Communally worked farms were enclosed into privately owned holdings; a procedure which was necessary for the more efficient methods needed to supply a growing population, but it further enlarged the landless class. Many small farmers and laborers were forced out of agriculture and migrated to the new industrial centers. 3 Where once the landowners had held the power and wealth, now the large-scale employers stepped in, and the economic power shifted hands. 4 The industrialization created a new problem; unemployed and starving workers. The working- class grew, and the more workers there were, the lower the wages could be. The population became more and more clearly divided into two classes; capital and labor, e.g. the rich and the poor.5 The great majority of the workers had to work long hours under bad conditions and perform “ tasks that destroyed both the body and the spirit .” 6 This of course created a growing discontent within the working class. The French Revolution and its ideas had a great impact on all of Europe. The 1789 storming of the Bastille and the Declaration of the Rights of Man had many supporters in England, and radical social thinking was becoming more common. 7 The Declaration stated that “ Men are born and remain free and equal in rights ” and that “ liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression” are a part of mankind’s natural rights; 8 a message which was propagandized throughout Europe. 9 Both the fact and the idea of revolution engaged the minds of many Romantic writers, and in the early period all leading English writers, except 2 Mary Shelley’s own words about travelling, written 1826 in a review of several new books on “The English in Italy”. Dekker, George G. The Fictions of Romantic Tourism Radcliffe, Scott, and Mary Shelley . (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2005.) 200 3 Abrams, M.H. General Editor. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Volume 2 . (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1993.) 2 4 Ibid. 1 5 Ibid. 2(f) 6 Ibid. 3 7 Ibid. 1 8 Buckler, John, et al. A History of World Societies . (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.) Page 725 9 Ibid. 726 4 Edmund Burke, were in sympathy with the Revolution.10 The political opinion in Britain was sharply divided by those who welcomed the French Revolution and those who saw it as a threat to the order of civilization. 11 In the early period of the French Revolution peasants were freed from many of the old injustices, 12 but the revolution grew increasingly violent and grisly, which made many of the English advocates to lose sympathy. 13 Later, many of the young writers, such as P.B Shelley, Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, still felt that the example of the French Revolution, when its mistakes had been annihilated, was man’s best hope. 14 During Robespierre’s Reign of Terror (1793-1794) thousands were guillotined, 15 and for many this represented a distortion of the ideals of the early revolution. 16 The prominent English poet William Wordsworth wrote in his famous poem The Prelude : “ Frenchmen had changed a war of self defence for one of Conquest .” 17 The social structure in England was threatened by the ideas of the revolution, and the ruling classes tried to repress all such activity by forbidding public meetings and charge those who spoke for political change with high treason. 18 Yet, the decisive changes in the economic system resulted in such alterations in the social conditions, that transformations in the political arrangements were needed also. New classes were arising, and started to demand political power. 19 The workers desperately needed higher wages, and between the years 1790-1810 there were over 500 riots protesting about the price of bread. 20 Both of Mary Shelley’s parents were renowned in the revolutionary movements that peaked in the late eighteenth century. 21 Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Women from 1792, but had previously impressed with A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790, which was her response to Edmund Burke’s conservative Reflections on the Revolution in France .22 Burke attacked the revolution and the 10 Abrams, M.H. General Editor. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Volume 2 . 4 11 Mullan, John, General Editor. Lives of the Great Romantics III Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley By their Contemporaries. Volume 2 Wollstonecraft. Jump, Harriet, Volume Editor. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999.) ix 12 Buckler, John, et al. A History of World Societies . 725 13 Abrams, M.H. General Editor. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Volume 2. 2 14 Ibid. 4 15 Ibid. 2 16 Buckler, John, et al. A History of World Societies . 731 17 Abrams, M.H. General Editor. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Volume 2. 2 18 Ibid. 2 19 Ibid. 2 20 Smith, Johanna M. Editor. Frankenstein . By Mary Shelley. Third edition 1831.
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