In The Madwoman in the Attic, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the categories of angel and monster that are given to women in a patriarchal society "where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters" (1932). Women are expected to behave like angels, to conform to the expectations that (male) society has of them. If they do not conform, particularly if they are in any way intellecutal, they are considered monsters. According to Gilbert and Gubar, this contributes to women writers' "'anxiety of authorship' -- a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a 'precursor' the act of writing will isolate or destroy her" (1929). Gilbert and Gubar explain that this anxiety was more prominent in the 19th century, when women writers did not have any precursors from which to draw an example, to gain strength, and to add to a tradition. These women writers, to which Shelley belongs, had to choose between being an angel or a monster -- to either remain passive and repress their desire to write, risking madness, or to write anyway, allowing themselvs to be labeled as monsters.
Applying Gilbert and Gubar's theory to Frankenstein, it is possible to interpret the creature as the monstrous side of Shelley (in society's view) and Victor as the angel. The creature is the manifestation of what happens to a woman writer in a patriarchal society -- one that sees the woman as "other" and denies women subjectivity (as Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex). The creature is the "other" and is denied subjectivity by society. On the other hand, Victor represents what happens to a women writer who is forced to repress her desire to write. Once Victor gives life to his creature, he realizes the implications of what that means -- he gave life to a "monster." From that point on, he tries to deny that he ever did anything of the sort, and the secrecy of it drives him mad and even results in mental and physical ill-health that parallels the sicknesses that Gilbert and Gubar point out as prominent and even desired among 19th century "angelic" women. Thus, Frankenstein illustrate the two choices offered to a woman in patriarchal society (even though few women are present in the novel) and its unwelcoming effects: "Whether she is a passive angel or an active monster, in other words, the woman writer feels herself to be literally or figuratively crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her" (Gilbert and Gubar 1936).
Gilbert and Gubar as well as Simone de Beauvoir and other feminist theorists base their theory on the way women are perceived in society. What might a Marxist or cultural studies theorist say about the socialization of women? How would Marxism or cultural studies analyze society's effects on a woman writer?
A weekly conversation between 12 graduate students using Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and its model of monstrous hybridity to explore the equally monstrous, equally hybrid field of literary theory. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
He Said...She Said.
Shelley’s Frankenstein, as we all know, has two different prefaces. One of these prefaces, included in the original edition, is written by her husband. Years later, Mary Shelley’s own preface is published with the 1831 edition of the work. These two distinct voices, relayed in the prefaces, tie in perfectly to the discussion that is presented in the beginning of Gilbert and Gubar’s work, “The Madwoman in the Attic.” Gilbert and Gubar ask, what happens “if the Queen’s looking glass speaks with the King’s voice?” How does this idea complicate the writing of Frankenstein, with the original preface being written in P. B. Shelley’s voice? Does this difference in author create a visible divide between the preface and the work, or is Mary Shelley, in the text, speaking with “the King’s voice”?
Let me answer that.
As previously discussed, P.B. Shelley’s preface is predominately focused on science and the advances being made, something that, even though the text touches upon, it is not the actual focus of the work. P.B. Shelley provides a very structured preface, trying to find a space for Frankenstein to be accepted in the world of science. However, when the work is read, it is clear that it is much more than an example of the capabilities of science. Frankenstein provides an undoubted discussion of humanity and the manner in which society constructs what is deemed acceptable and what is not. Thus, the ideas the P.B. Shelley presents in attempts to latch the work onto the scientific advancements of the time, are clearly not developed in the text. In that matter, it becomes obvious that Mary is presenting her work according to her own standards, and is not attempting to align herself with those of the King.
If Mary is not speaking in the King’s voice, then she is most certainly speaking in her own. In her preface, the reader is shown her writing process, something which naturally flowed out of her onto paper. In reading the preface that Mary writes, it is obvious that the book naturally follows, and that they are of the same hand. In Mary’s preface she details the development of the work, and does not try to validate it. She depicts her relationship with the work, something that only an author can accurately do.
In terms of Mary Shelley then, it appears to me as if she does not try to speak with the King’s voice, but instead challenges the standard by using her own. She does not have a problem with presenting her work in her voice, and the fact that she includes a second preface many years later, shows that she wants the work to exist in a manner that is all her own. Thus, Shelley truly helps to create the image of female author as a force to be reckoned with, resisting the notion that female authors must rely on their male predecessors.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Click here, if you dare!
It makes sense to think about the female characters in Frankenstein when reading this week’s pieces, however some concepts from Halberstam’s biography and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” prove interesting when applied to Victor Frankenstein’s creation.
It makes sense to think about the female characters in Frankenstein when reading this week’s pieces, however some concepts from Halberstam’s biography and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” prove interesting when applied to Victor Frankenstein’s creation.
For example, Norton mentions the idea of women being able to, “access masculinity as well, and they can do so without surgically altering their bodies” (Norton 2635). It is fascinating to mull the groundbreaking science involved in Shelley’s “creation.” How far ahead of her time was she, that men and women are now able to serve as their own Frankenstein: with the financial resources available, all modern humans can explore surgically altering their own sexuality.
Halberstam’s piece led me to question the creature’s sexuality. The obvious question that lingers is the true sex of the creature: we can safely assume that the creature is masculine, but we do not know of the true functionality of his sexuality. On page 97, the creature states his attraction to young women, but appears to comprehend the fact that such a beautiful, young woman would not want to engage with him because of the “sanguinary laws of man.”
The creature then explains, “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.” Does the creature know what those sympathies are? We know he has independently become quite learned, but has he been able to discern the complex issues surrounding sexuality?
Halberstam also brings up the idea of ugliness and female masculinity that might be interesting to discuss within our gathered ideals of ugliness and male masculinity (2650-2651)). Don’t some of these traits relate to the description of the creature, especially the quote from Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Assuredly, these are descriptions supporting a thesis about female beauty, but can they be applied - in a human way - to men? Indeed, had the creature possessed more facial beauty, would he not have been revered as a superhuman man? He had great intellect and power; it was his mug - his “yellow skin” that “scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” that got him in trouble. Similarly, he had “hair of a lustrous black,” like Collins’ Marian with her “thick, coal-black hair” (Shelley 34).
Of course, this passage deals with lesbian ideals of beauty and the ways they are interpreted by men, but it may illustrate a greater human understanding - or, misunderstanding - of “beauty” and “ugliness.”
As Victor himself said, “I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! - Great God!” (34).
Feminist Approaches as a Reinvention of Marxist Literary Theory
Update: I corrected some typographical errors. I also posted a PDF on Blackboard.
The contemporary feminist discourse—indeed, the whole of gender identity theory—finds itself anchored, intentionally or not, in a cultural struggle accurately described by Marxist theorists a century earlier. Feminist theory is a re-imagining of the same class structures identified by the Marxists and cast in terms of “anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance” (Butler 2549). Gender and sex serve as substitutes for economic class power structures. In framing a discussion in terms of “the institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled,” these theorists are inevitably entering into the same theoretical claims posed by Marxists as explanations of dominant and oppositional culture (Rich 1591). While the Marxists look at the state apparatus and the repression of a minority identity in relation to class, the feminist theorists replace class with gender and sexuality.
The Marxist conception of society’s structure is one with a dominate culture prevailing over alternative and oppositional cultures. Institutions such as schools and religions serve as forces of control towards maintaining that dominant culture; these apparatuses of the state have but one function and that function is maintaining the dominant state. To say then that Harold Bloom serves as a state apparatus is to suggest that his views on literature serve to fiercely promote the western tradition dominated by white male authors, a position he sticks to vehemently. In part because Marxists were concerned with the condition of political control, their focus tends to be in relationships within the political realm offering definitions of “the State as a ‘machine’ of repression, enabling the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class” (Althusser 1339). The struggle within the Marxist tradition focuses on socio-economic class; they champion the working class while chastising aristocracy’s dominant cultural position. The feminist theorists offer a fundamentally similar discourse and the alternative narrative they construct simply relies on a new lexicon charged with sexuality and gender.
Feminist and gender identity theorists identify a relationship between male and female authors on the same conditions as the Marxists identify the relationship between the working class and ruling aristocracy. In the feminist construct, the dominant culture is a white male tradition with female or non-heterosexual men acting in a minority role. “The fierce protection of white male privilege from minority encroachments rounds out a century of discourses of manliness and manhood” and thus serving as an institutional state apparatus defending the dominant white male hegemony (Halberstam 2638). The literary tradition, like government schools or the institution of the Church, has served primarily as means to continue the dominate white male culture—Harold Bloom is not the first nor only State apparatus promoting the white male literary canon. The normative concern of feminist theory focuses on “Western literary history is [as] overwhelmingly male—or, more accurately, patriarchal” and therefore feminists believe the traditional concept of the literary canon reduces women and femininity to a secondary, alternative culture (Gilbart and Gubar 1928). Women’s presence in the literary world is, as Deleuze and Guattari describe within the Marxist tradition, a minor literature constructed within the major language of white masculinity. At the same time, female characters are similarly overshadowed by mythological constructions of women created by the dominant male culture. These myths serve as “institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled;” such institutional myths serve to further undermine the female within the literary canon (Rich 1591). The mythology of women is an extension of the marginalization of femininity and serves as constituent component to female repression; feminine mythology serves the same function of a school or a church to maintaining the dominant culture. The mythology is another form of the state apparatus.
As the dominant culture, the male author and masculine characters do not endure the same challenges faced by their female counterparts because “woman is other than man;” yet for the white male “there is no such thing as a masculine mystery” (de Beauvoir 1265, 1270). The dialectic that feminists theorists pursue then is one of white male dominant culture with the role of the female artist and the female character participating in “in quite a different literary subculture from that inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has its own distinctive literary traditions” (Gilbert and Gubar 1930). Such a subculture would suggest also that female writers produce the culture for a female subculture. Again, such a position borrows from the Marxist tradition:
Serving as the intellectuals of a distinct subculture, female writers bear the responsibility of bringing about a female subculture that is not alternative but rather oppositional. Adrienne Rich argues “feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration,” suggesting a similar argument presented by Raymond Williams (Rich 1593). Williams explains that “there is a simple theoretical distinction between alternative and oppositional, that is to say between someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with, and someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change the society in its light” (Williams 1431). It is here that the yoke between feminism and Marxism becomes forever interwoven; the minority female subculture identified by feminist theorists is being called to action to challenge the dominant white male hegemony precisely in the same way the Marxists see the conflict between the working class and the ruling aristocracy.
Once more, Mary Shelley rescues theorists’ assumptions by providing textual evidence supporting feminist approaches with Frankenstein a sandbox for yet another demonstration of theoretical claims. The critical moment for Victor is the destruction of the female monster before giving her life; by destroying the she-creature, Victor sets in motion the destruction of his own family and his inevitable premature death. The parallel between Marxist and feminist theory is at the forefront of his decision. The act of destroying the monster serves to protect the white male privilege from encroachment. Victor acts in the interest of the State to preserve the dominant culture; his act is a literal and figurative protection of white male hegemony. The creation of his male monster represents “Frankenstein’s implicit goal of creating a society for men only” (Mellor 274). The male creature alone presents no threat to the dominant culture Victor represents. It is only in the creation of a female monster that the dominant culture is threatened. The female creates the threat. Victor asks himself “had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (Shelley 114). Creating a female monster would presumably allow the monster the capability of reproduction and thus allow the monster in future generations to displace the society Victor, as a member of the aristocratic class, is so much a part of. The fundamental component to Victor’s concern is the threat that a race of monsters present to the State. This threat manifests itself as a fear of the female because female subculture represents the same threat to dominant male culture. His refusal to complete the female creature suggests his concern that she “might assert her own integrity and the revolutionary right to determine her own existence” (Mellor 279). The fear of a she-creature rejecting the male monster’s plans is similar to Victor’s fear that the monsters present a threat to his own position as a privileged white male. With the creation of a female monster, the male monster ceases to be the other and instead takes his place as a ruling patriarch.
The feminist tradition reinvents the Marxist conception of dominant culture in new terms of sexual and gender identity. It serves as an extension of the Marxist tradition as a specific subset of the approach. In many ways, the feminist critical approach proves vulnerable to Harold Bloom; as a theoretical approach, feminist and gender identity theories are unable to escape the gravitational pull of the massive western literary tradition. They are in effect, under the same anxieties of influence experienced by male writers misinterpreting and reinventing a long line of western literary critiques.
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1335 – 1361. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 2540 – 2553. Print.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1423 – 1437. Print.
Gilbert, Sandra M., Gubar, Susan. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1926 – 1938. Print.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Formation of the Intellectuals.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1002 – 1008. Print.
Halberstam, Judith. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 2638 – 2653. Print.
Mellor, Anne K. “Possessing Nature: the Female in Frankenstein.” Frankenstein. Ed J. Paul Hunter. New
York: Norton, 1996. 274 – 286. Print.
Rich, Adrienne. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1591 – 1609. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1996. Print.
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1423 – 1437. Print.
The contemporary feminist discourse—indeed, the whole of gender identity theory—finds itself anchored, intentionally or not, in a cultural struggle accurately described by Marxist theorists a century earlier. Feminist theory is a re-imagining of the same class structures identified by the Marxists and cast in terms of “anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance” (Butler 2549). Gender and sex serve as substitutes for economic class power structures. In framing a discussion in terms of “the institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled,” these theorists are inevitably entering into the same theoretical claims posed by Marxists as explanations of dominant and oppositional culture (Rich 1591). While the Marxists look at the state apparatus and the repression of a minority identity in relation to class, the feminist theorists replace class with gender and sexuality.
The Marxist conception of society’s structure is one with a dominate culture prevailing over alternative and oppositional cultures. Institutions such as schools and religions serve as forces of control towards maintaining that dominant culture; these apparatuses of the state have but one function and that function is maintaining the dominant state. To say then that Harold Bloom serves as a state apparatus is to suggest that his views on literature serve to fiercely promote the western tradition dominated by white male authors, a position he sticks to vehemently. In part because Marxists were concerned with the condition of political control, their focus tends to be in relationships within the political realm offering definitions of “the State as a ‘machine’ of repression, enabling the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class” (Althusser 1339). The struggle within the Marxist tradition focuses on socio-economic class; they champion the working class while chastising aristocracy’s dominant cultural position. The feminist theorists offer a fundamentally similar discourse and the alternative narrative they construct simply relies on a new lexicon charged with sexuality and gender.
Feminist and gender identity theorists identify a relationship between male and female authors on the same conditions as the Marxists identify the relationship between the working class and ruling aristocracy. In the feminist construct, the dominant culture is a white male tradition with female or non-heterosexual men acting in a minority role. “The fierce protection of white male privilege from minority encroachments rounds out a century of discourses of manliness and manhood” and thus serving as an institutional state apparatus defending the dominant white male hegemony (Halberstam 2638). The literary tradition, like government schools or the institution of the Church, has served primarily as means to continue the dominate white male culture—Harold Bloom is not the first nor only State apparatus promoting the white male literary canon. The normative concern of feminist theory focuses on “Western literary history is [as] overwhelmingly male—or, more accurately, patriarchal” and therefore feminists believe the traditional concept of the literary canon reduces women and femininity to a secondary, alternative culture (Gilbart and Gubar 1928). Women’s presence in the literary world is, as Deleuze and Guattari describe within the Marxist tradition, a minor literature constructed within the major language of white masculinity. At the same time, female characters are similarly overshadowed by mythological constructions of women created by the dominant male culture. These myths serve as “institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled;” such institutional myths serve to further undermine the female within the literary canon (Rich 1591). The mythology of women is an extension of the marginalization of femininity and serves as constituent component to female repression; feminine mythology serves the same function of a school or a church to maintaining the dominant culture. The mythology is another form of the state apparatus.
As the dominant culture, the male author and masculine characters do not endure the same challenges faced by their female counterparts because “woman is other than man;” yet for the white male “there is no such thing as a masculine mystery” (de Beauvoir 1265, 1270). The dialectic that feminists theorists pursue then is one of white male dominant culture with the role of the female artist and the female character participating in “in quite a different literary subculture from that inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has its own distinctive literary traditions” (Gilbert and Gubar 1930). Such a subculture would suggest also that female writers produce the culture for a female subculture. Again, such a position borrows from the Marxist tradition:
“Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.” (Gramsci 1002)
Serving as the intellectuals of a distinct subculture, female writers bear the responsibility of bringing about a female subculture that is not alternative but rather oppositional. Adrienne Rich argues “feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration,” suggesting a similar argument presented by Raymond Williams (Rich 1593). Williams explains that “there is a simple theoretical distinction between alternative and oppositional, that is to say between someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with, and someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change the society in its light” (Williams 1431). It is here that the yoke between feminism and Marxism becomes forever interwoven; the minority female subculture identified by feminist theorists is being called to action to challenge the dominant white male hegemony precisely in the same way the Marxists see the conflict between the working class and the ruling aristocracy.
Once more, Mary Shelley rescues theorists’ assumptions by providing textual evidence supporting feminist approaches with Frankenstein a sandbox for yet another demonstration of theoretical claims. The critical moment for Victor is the destruction of the female monster before giving her life; by destroying the she-creature, Victor sets in motion the destruction of his own family and his inevitable premature death. The parallel between Marxist and feminist theory is at the forefront of his decision. The act of destroying the monster serves to protect the white male privilege from encroachment. Victor acts in the interest of the State to preserve the dominant culture; his act is a literal and figurative protection of white male hegemony. The creation of his male monster represents “Frankenstein’s implicit goal of creating a society for men only” (Mellor 274). The male creature alone presents no threat to the dominant culture Victor represents. It is only in the creation of a female monster that the dominant culture is threatened. The female creates the threat. Victor asks himself “had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (Shelley 114). Creating a female monster would presumably allow the monster the capability of reproduction and thus allow the monster in future generations to displace the society Victor, as a member of the aristocratic class, is so much a part of. The fundamental component to Victor’s concern is the threat that a race of monsters present to the State. This threat manifests itself as a fear of the female because female subculture represents the same threat to dominant male culture. His refusal to complete the female creature suggests his concern that she “might assert her own integrity and the revolutionary right to determine her own existence” (Mellor 279). The fear of a she-creature rejecting the male monster’s plans is similar to Victor’s fear that the monsters present a threat to his own position as a privileged white male. With the creation of a female monster, the male monster ceases to be the other and instead takes his place as a ruling patriarch.
The feminist tradition reinvents the Marxist conception of dominant culture in new terms of sexual and gender identity. It serves as an extension of the Marxist tradition as a specific subset of the approach. In many ways, the feminist critical approach proves vulnerable to Harold Bloom; as a theoretical approach, feminist and gender identity theories are unable to escape the gravitational pull of the massive western literary tradition. They are in effect, under the same anxieties of influence experienced by male writers misinterpreting and reinventing a long line of western literary critiques.
Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1335 – 1361. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 2540 – 2553. Print.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1423 – 1437. Print.
Gilbert, Sandra M., Gubar, Susan. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1926 – 1938. Print.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Formation of the Intellectuals.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1002 – 1008. Print.
Halberstam, Judith. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 2638 – 2653. Print.
Mellor, Anne K. “Possessing Nature: the Female in Frankenstein.” Frankenstein. Ed J. Paul Hunter. New
York: Norton, 1996. 274 – 286. Print.
Rich, Adrienne. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1591 – 1609. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1996. Print.
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1423 – 1437. Print.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Methodology of Deconstruction
In “The Exorbitant. Question of Method” Derrida develops the methodology of deconstruction. According to him, “the writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. He uses them only by letting himself….be governed by the system” (1691).Thus for Derrida critical reading should focus on what a writer commands of the patterns of language he uses and, equally important, on what is out of his command. For critical reading to produce a signifying structure, it must not merely reproduce the intentional relationship the author has with history, which is conveyed by language. This encourages a protected reading, whereas Derrida is in favor for an unrestrained open reading. It seems to me that he challenges the totality of outside references, such as history and psychoanalysis in the way they close up a text. Derrida attempts to open up texts to repressed meanings that exist outside of western metaphysical tradition, although never really detached. Hence, what opens a reading to Derrida is the absence of the “supplement” or “substitutive signification” that is only traces that take form in differential references outside the text. Thus, Derrida encourages an intrinsic reading that remains within a text. He proposes a deconstruction of a text by examining language and the text in the most infrastructural sense. By offering double commentary, or dual reading deconstruction seeks out binary oppositions and then inverts them. This also reinforces that a text has multiple interpretations. Contrary to my previous belief, deconstruction does not dismantle or deconstruct a text, but rather shows how the text deconstructs itself by inherent contradictions; interpretation of meaning depends on the identification of binaries and oppositions and then by the dismantling and displacement of them through critical reading. Thus, what seems to be stable or meaningful becomes elusive.
In “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Bud” Johnson applies Derrida deconstructionist method to Melville’s Billy Bud. Johnson examines the infrastructure in term of binary oppositions and contradictions. First she examines the discrepancy between character and action: Billy Bud the good, innocent, and harmless character kills the evil and malicious Claggart, thus making the latter a victim, and condemning himself. The contradiction and discrepancy between character and action to Johnson is reflective of the arbitrariness of the relationship between signifier and signified, and by that she adds a another layer of interpretation in which a character’s inner being is the signified and his outer being the signifier. Whereas most critical readings see the opposition between Bud and Claggart as an allegorical good against evil and Adam versus Satan, Johnson reverts this reading by revealing the tensions that imply that Billy is not as innocent as he seems. She says “far from being simply and naturally pure, he is obsessed with his own irreproachability in the eyes of authority” (2265). Johnson further implies that Billy’s explosive blow to Claggart might be was due to his self-repression and his obdurate insistence on his innocence. She also shows that Claggart there are factors for his adamant hate of Billy Bud since he “perceives Billy only though the distortion of an unfavorable interpretation” (2268). Johnson provides this “reverted reading” through the clash of two readings (in which Bud and Claggart are the readers of each other) rather than two characters. Other oppositions Johnson analyzes is justice/injustice, knowing/doing, performance/cognition.
In relation to Frankenstein, we can also attempt to deconstruct the work in the same way Johnson did of Melville’s Billy Bud: by examining the oppositions that eventually invert within themselves. I would especially like to focus on the Creator/Creation binary. Upon close reading of the text it can be discovered that this binary position is already flawed and unsettled. In the process of creation, Frankenstein thinks about glory as a creator: “a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.” Still, Frankenstein creates a being that is larger and stronger than him, making it very difficult for him to subdue or control his creation, thus destabilizing his position as creator. Furthermore, by giving the Creature life, Frankenstein becomes responsible for his happiness and welfare, yet he immediately abandons the creature, leaving him to find his own way in the world; a deplorable behavior on part of the creator. Victor leaves the creature in infantile condition, absolving himself of any responsibility; yet he is responsible for the Creature and its actions, but Victor only thinks of the Creature as a situation when he starts hurting his family. The Creature was born inherently good, yet it is people’s rejection and Victor’s abandonment that turns him evil. We can see how after his disastrous encounter with the cottagers, the Creature reads Frankenstein’s journal and vows revenge, seeing his creator as a tyrant and tormentor for creating him hideous and then forsaking him. Although it is the Creature the one who wreaks havoc and destruction, it is Victor to blame because of his faults as a creator. These faults can be first seen in the physical appearance of his creation that is described as having yellow skin, eyes sunk into their sockets, and black lips. One can also argue that the monster is Victor’s double and is merely acting out his evil impulses. For instance, when Victor destroys the monster’s bride, he does it on a selfish impulse, for how can he deprive his creature of female companionship when Victor himself is soon to be wed. When the Monster says to Victor that he will be with him on his wedding night, it is clearly a threat to hurt Elizabeth not Victor although he convinces Walton that it was he was the one that would be killed. If the Monster wanted to kill Victor he would have done it on the spot, and judging from the Monster’s actions, it seems that he wants to hurt Victor’s family to make him miserable and lonely. We can see from this point how when it is the creator that has power over his creation, the creation begins to have power over him, because he has forsaken his responsibilities as creator. The Creature in a supplication to his creator reasons with Victor, imploring him to do his duty toward his creation: “All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." Then the Creature becomes in a position of power, and enslaves his creator. In the subjugation of Victor to the Creature, the Creature says: “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;-obey!” In the end it is the Creature who destroys the creator, yet the death of the Creator entails the death of the creation, thus restoring some balance to the creator/creation binary.
In “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Bud” Johnson applies Derrida deconstructionist method to Melville’s Billy Bud. Johnson examines the infrastructure in term of binary oppositions and contradictions. First she examines the discrepancy between character and action: Billy Bud the good, innocent, and harmless character kills the evil and malicious Claggart, thus making the latter a victim, and condemning himself. The contradiction and discrepancy between character and action to Johnson is reflective of the arbitrariness of the relationship between signifier and signified, and by that she adds a another layer of interpretation in which a character’s inner being is the signified and his outer being the signifier. Whereas most critical readings see the opposition between Bud and Claggart as an allegorical good against evil and Adam versus Satan, Johnson reverts this reading by revealing the tensions that imply that Billy is not as innocent as he seems. She says “far from being simply and naturally pure, he is obsessed with his own irreproachability in the eyes of authority” (2265). Johnson further implies that Billy’s explosive blow to Claggart might be was due to his self-repression and his obdurate insistence on his innocence. She also shows that Claggart there are factors for his adamant hate of Billy Bud since he “perceives Billy only though the distortion of an unfavorable interpretation” (2268). Johnson provides this “reverted reading” through the clash of two readings (in which Bud and Claggart are the readers of each other) rather than two characters. Other oppositions Johnson analyzes is justice/injustice, knowing/doing, performance/cognition.
In relation to Frankenstein, we can also attempt to deconstruct the work in the same way Johnson did of Melville’s Billy Bud: by examining the oppositions that eventually invert within themselves. I would especially like to focus on the Creator/Creation binary. Upon close reading of the text it can be discovered that this binary position is already flawed and unsettled. In the process of creation, Frankenstein thinks about glory as a creator: “a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.” Still, Frankenstein creates a being that is larger and stronger than him, making it very difficult for him to subdue or control his creation, thus destabilizing his position as creator. Furthermore, by giving the Creature life, Frankenstein becomes responsible for his happiness and welfare, yet he immediately abandons the creature, leaving him to find his own way in the world; a deplorable behavior on part of the creator. Victor leaves the creature in infantile condition, absolving himself of any responsibility; yet he is responsible for the Creature and its actions, but Victor only thinks of the Creature as a situation when he starts hurting his family. The Creature was born inherently good, yet it is people’s rejection and Victor’s abandonment that turns him evil. We can see how after his disastrous encounter with the cottagers, the Creature reads Frankenstein’s journal and vows revenge, seeing his creator as a tyrant and tormentor for creating him hideous and then forsaking him. Although it is the Creature the one who wreaks havoc and destruction, it is Victor to blame because of his faults as a creator. These faults can be first seen in the physical appearance of his creation that is described as having yellow skin, eyes sunk into their sockets, and black lips. One can also argue that the monster is Victor’s double and is merely acting out his evil impulses. For instance, when Victor destroys the monster’s bride, he does it on a selfish impulse, for how can he deprive his creature of female companionship when Victor himself is soon to be wed. When the Monster says to Victor that he will be with him on his wedding night, it is clearly a threat to hurt Elizabeth not Victor although he convinces Walton that it was he was the one that would be killed. If the Monster wanted to kill Victor he would have done it on the spot, and judging from the Monster’s actions, it seems that he wants to hurt Victor’s family to make him miserable and lonely. We can see from this point how when it is the creator that has power over his creation, the creation begins to have power over him, because he has forsaken his responsibilities as creator. The Creature in a supplication to his creator reasons with Victor, imploring him to do his duty toward his creation: “All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." Then the Creature becomes in a position of power, and enslaves his creator. In the subjugation of Victor to the Creature, the Creature says: “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;-obey!” In the end it is the Creature who destroys the creator, yet the death of the Creator entails the death of the creation, thus restoring some balance to the creator/creation binary.
He is De Man
There is much in Paul De Man’s “Semiology and Rhetoric” that that helps to clarify the discrepancies and commonalities between the formalist intrinsic concerns and those issues that would appear to be extrinsic, or ancillary to the text. Through De Man’s accessible language and his concrete examples, the rhetorical and grammatical are juxtaposed and employed with/against each other in the deconstruction of what is meant and where that meaning originates. The ending of his essay is especially alluring as his systematic approach and earnest understanding of the potential impact and relevance of his concerns culminate in a capitulation to the illusory nature of language and a concession to only constants of literature and literary study: their fundamental emotiveness and uncertainty. The opening of his essay is reminiscent of Percy Shelley’s preface to Frankenstein. De Man qualifies the literary atmosphere and presents a thermometer reading of the critical climate to validate and frame his concerns, as Shelley cites precedent and underscores intent and motivation for the work that follows his preface. The notion behind De Man’s claim of Formalism, that it “is a all-absorbing and tyrannical muse”, was only somewhat consciously cultivated in my reading of Eichenbaum and the Formalists’ approach; De Man’s succinct framing of Formalism now resonates in my own reaction to and understanding of the movement. Here we can see a relation to Bloom’s anxiety of influence in terms of the critic. Bloom argues that the critic and the poet are alike in that they must challenge and evade their precursors, but can never entirely free themselves from influence. De Man does not deplore formalism, but seems to question how to elude its influence and challenge its reductive propensities without entirely discarding its useful techniques and methods. The generally accepted outside/inside metaphor appropriated to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic criticism occluded the reconciliation of aspects of each that seemed intractably exclusive, but De Man demurred; he deconstructs the very metaphoric device and displays that the device and the difference between accompanying concerns of the grammatical and rhetorical rest on a narrow understanding of how one its established and instantiated by the other in terms of presence and absence that in tern suggest each other. Though I am not certain that I comprehend every aspect of De Man’s argument and the methods he employs, I think that his explanation involving Archie Bunker and the rhetorical question is helpful. It seems that the “tension between grammar and rhetoric” – like the tension between the intrinsic and the extrinsic or between metaphor and metonymy - is never resolved entirely, but the deconstruction of the ‘difference’ between the two shows them to be inextricably linked at some fundamental level (1370). Consider Walton’s question “Must I then lose this admirable being? (147)” in the context of De Man’s framing; consider how “the same grammatical pattern engenders two meanings that are mutually exclusive” (1370). How can this question explore De Man’s idea that “Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginously possibilities of referential aberration? In what ways does this, and other sections where De Man focuses on metaphor and metonymy, involve Lacan’s concept of the chain of signification? I think Walton’s question to be particularly fitting in that it shows the need for an “extra-textual intention” to understand not only what Walton means with this specific question (we can surely come to a decision with confidence in that regard – though even if taken literally this grammatical reading of the question may underscore “his despair when confronted with a structure of linguistic meaning that he cannot control” (1371) – we cannot be Walton’s friend), but what the relationship between Walton and Frankenstein signifies.
Foucault's "What Is an Author?"
I just want to start off by saying that I loved Foucault and "What Is an Author?"! This whole author business is a pretty heated conversation among theorists, huh? I think Foucault's conclusion is the one I most align with so far. I agree with the Intentional Fallacy in that a critic should focus on the form of a text for meaning and with Roland Barthes in that the writing should speak for itself. But in the back of my mind, I kept wondering how one could possibly discount the author completely. Don't we know the author of a work before we even open it? And doesn't the author make a difference in what works we read in the first place? I'm sure Bloom would have a huge problem with eliminating the author completely. In Foucault's examination of the author-function, he cannot do away with the author completely; he does, however, argue that the way critcs examine the author-function in a work should be altered. He says, "Suspicions arise concerning the absolute nature and creative role of the subect. But the subject should not be entirely abandoned...Rather, we should ask: under what conditions and through what forms can an entity like the subject appear in the order of discourse; what position does it occupy; what functions does it exhibit; and what rules does it follow in each type of discourse? In short, the subject (and its substitutes must be stripped of its creative role and analysed as a complex and variable function of discourse" (1489). Thus, applying this to Shelley and Frankenstein, how does Shelley fit into the discourse of the early 1800s? What cultural conventions shaped both Shelley and her work? A writer's life and environment make their way into his or her writing whether intentionally or not. So we can look in the work for these hints of the cultural conventions that went into its making. Also, I think Foucault's essay forces us to reexamine our pre-conceived notions of what an author is and why the author is so important to us today. Shelley is a prime example of the importance of the author in that she had to publish Frankenstein anonymously because she is a woman. And once people found out that the book was written by a women, they disliked it even more. I enjoyed Foucault's examination of how our concept of an author developed. And what's interesting is that now, Shelley's name is forever linked with her work. It's not just Frankenstein, but Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
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