Seminar Paper for Monday

Vanessa Velez

Intro. to Graduate Literature Studies

Prof. Larry Lyons

20 November 2010

Defining “Otherness” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Identity is a topic which is addressed from many different viewpoints in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The novel addresses concerns regarding national and ethnic identity, but also transcends these issues and moves towards the question of how individuals self-indentify and how they are capable of creating their own world based upon their intellectual pursuits. The novel in a way points out that many of the characters, not only the Creature, are facing the dilemma of trying to define themselves outside the limits of heritage into a world of their own choosing and creation. By first analyzing the position of the Creature from a racial and ethnic standpoint we can then see how many of his obstacles can be compared to the experiences of other characters in the novel. Beginning the analysis from this standpoint will give us a better view of how the Creature is not the only character who could be considered the historic “other” within the story, but that the story itself is based upon multiple views of “otherness” through different character perspectives.

According to Gloria Anzaldúa in her essay “Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza” (2098) “the mestiza’s dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness…La mestiza is a product of the transfer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another.”(2099) As can be seen in the novel, The Creature in Frankenstein is a prime example of Anzaldúa’s statement. Not only is he alienated by the world because of his form, but he is composed of different people’s body parts. In a way we can think of his body as an allegory for the compound psychic nature of La Mestiza. Anzaldúa states:

“As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out…yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet. Soy un amasamiento, I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.” (2101)

Corresponding to this statement made by Anzaldúa, after learning of the outside world through overhearing Safie’s lessons, the Creature states “And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant…I was, besides, endowed with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man…When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”(81) By having the Creature question his own identity and place in the world, Shelley calls upon the reader to question what defines his or her idea of ethnic identification. Is ethnic or national status ascribed to us at birth, or do we, as individuals, create a space within society for ourselves to exist? Anzaldúa stresses in “Borderlands” that to relieve oneself of this psychic struggle with inner duality we must rise above the “borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out” (2100) and instead focus on the creation of a “new mythos—that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave—La mestiza creates a new consciousness.”(2101) However, the Creature does not immediately ascribe himself to Anzaldúa’s point of view of self creation.

In his essay “Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times” Henry Louis Gates Jr. describes Alexander Crummell’s efforts to prove his intellectual competency to then South Carolinian Senator John C. Calhoun by mastering Greek syntax. Crummell narrates a story in which he overheard Calhoun speaking at a dinner “One of the utterances of Mr. Calhoun was to this effect—‘That if he could find a Negro who knew the Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro was a human being and should be treated as a man.’”(2431) Crummell accepted Calhoun’s challenge and went on to Queen’s College in Cambridge where he proceeded to master the antiquated syntax, but as Gates Jr. states “Calhoun, we suspect, was not impressed.”(2432)

Much like Crummell, the Creature goes on to educate himself in the writings of Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter, only momentarily drawing sympathy and understanding from Victor. As Victor states in response to the Creature’s story of his beginnings: “His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?”(99) However, Victor, rethinking his position, retreats back to his original disposition for loathing of the Creature: “His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred.”(99)

After this event the Creature resorts to what Anzaldúa described as a “counterstance” which “locks one into a duel of oppressor ad oppressed.”(2100) Although Anzaldúa views this situation as “a step towards liberation from cultural domination”(2100) she resigns “But it is not a way of life. At some point on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once.”(2100)

In agreement with Anzaldúa on this point, Barbara Christian in her essay “The Race for Theory”(2128) suggests that the use of language is what could bind people together from all societal realms. However, much like Anzaldúa, she acknowledges what the construction of binary oppositions may create: “Constructs like the center and the periphery reveal that tendency to want to make the world less complex by organizing it according to one principle, to fix it through an idea which is really an ideal.”(2134)

In Frankenstein, however, we can see that this ideal is challenged. Almost every character comes from a background that in a way is as much of a cultural pastiche as the Creature’s quilt-stitched body. For example, minor characters such as Beaufort, Caroline Frankenstein, the De Lacy’s, Safie, and Elizabeth Lavenza all come from a cultural situation of hybridism. After Beaufort has lost his wealth, it is stated “he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness.”(18) When entreating his brother to take his daughter into his care and avoid having her raised by an Italian stepmother, Victor’s uncle states “decide whether you would prefer educating our niece yourself to her being brought up by a stepmother.”(19) The De Lacy’s, much like Beaufort, faced a new life of poverty as a consequence to political dissent, and Safie, as well, came from a bi-cultural household; her mother being Christian and her father being Muslim. From these examples we can see how just about everyone in the novel comes from a state of “otherness”. Their beginnings share many similarities with that of the Creature’s own beginnings; they all had to depart from one threat of cultural oppression to something they would find more suitable to their individual needs. Unlike the Creature, however, most of these characters’ needs are met. The ongoing obstacle for the reader would be to determine is if any of these characters are actually in any way so far removed from the disposition of the Creature.

In closing, we should also examine how the ship plays a part in the telling of Frankenstein in regards to what Paul Gilroy explains in his essay “The Black Atlantic.” “It should be emphasized that ships were the living means by which the points within that Atlantic world were joined. They were mobile elements that stood for the shifting spaces in between the fixed places that they connected. Accordingly they need to be thought of as cultural and political units rather than abstract embodiments of the triangular trade. They were something more—a means to conduct political dissent and possibly a distinct mode of cultural production.”(2572) By having the entire telling of the story take place on the ship, the story is removed from any distinct cultural “center” which could confine its meaning, and the desolate pole in which it sails could be thought of as presenting no “periphery” to which its meaning could be limited. It is in a way isolated but also freed from any boundary which could restrict its signification. Choosing this spatial setting allows readers to remove themselves from the confines of cultural practices or politics which may have been restricted if the story were land-locked, and enables them to step away from the story and view the subjects and topics it presents from a wider perspective.

Bibliography:

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and J. Paul Hunter. Frankenstein: the 1818 Text, Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. "From Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 2098-109. Print.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis. "Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times." Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 2430-438. Print.

Gilroy, Paul. "From The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness." Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 2556-575. Print.