Incest in Victorian Literature - Anca Vlasopolos (essay date 1983)

Anca Vlasopolos (essay date 1983)

SOURCE: “Frankenstein's Hidden Skeleton: The Psycho-Politics of Oppression,” in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 10, No. 30, July, 1983, pp. 125-35.

[In the following essay, Vlasopolos suggests that despite some awkwardness of style and plot improbabilities Frankenstein is a coherent novel because of the conflict it presents between accepted socio-political forces and the private struggle of a man who views himself as driven to incest.]

Renewed interest in Frankenstein suggests that the novel possesses a covert structure which, despite some critics' charges of awkwardness of style and improbabilities of plot, gives the novel a coherence that has been felt by generations of fascinated readers.1 The hidden logic of Frankenstein rests on Mary Shelley's fusion of the socio-political forces used to ensure the survival of the aristocracy with the private drama of a man...

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