Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Devon Hodges (essay date 1983)


Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Devon Hodges (essay date 1983)

Devon Hodges (essay date 1983)

SOURCE: "Frankenstein and the Feminine Subversion of the Novel," in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall, 1983, pp. 155-64.

[In the following essay, Hodges focuses on the literary originality of Frankenstein, arguing that, in opposition to the conventions set by a powerful lineage of male authors, Shelley uses the novel form "to change structures of narrative as well as to introduce new topics of discussion."]

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has long been labelled a "woman's book." Ellen Moers describes Frankenstein as a female "birth myth" which depicts Shelley's ambivalence about motherhood;1 Kate Ellis interprets Frankenstein as a critique of the bourgeois family and the separation of male and female spheres;2 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar write that the book describes a "woman's helpless alienation in a male...

[The entire page is 4503 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass