Frankenstein Critique

The criticism that I choose to summarize and reflect upon was titled “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother” written by Ellen Moers. Her article was written over a century and a half after the publishing of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, around 1974. Ellen is mainly focused on the gothic and monster themes that show through in Shelley’s story. First she states that it was a very unique book written during these times because the main character was not a woman, even though it was a woman that was writing it. Ellen then goes on the give a little background/history of Mary Shelley’s life. Ellen tells of the horrific love life that Shelley had beginning at the age of 16, with the death of her babies and illegitimate relationship with a married man, and deaths in her family. Ellen connects the tragedy in Frankenstein of the “monster” that Frankenstein created and ran way from to that of Shelley’s life. Ellen wrote this article because she enjoyed the book and agrees with many that it is an original piece of literature that deserves a lot of positive praise.
Ellen did read this book differently than me. I do think this is because Ellen did some background research on Shelley and found out the gruesome facts of the deaths in her family and of Shelley’s own babies. I did not make the connection that Frankenstein, as he quotes things about creating something from dust that death has taken away, could possibly connect to the way that Shelley felt about her own babies dying, one even without a name. I did learn the about the early life of Shelley, that she was a mistress to a married man, who ended up marrying Mary. I did not know she was 16 when she was pregnant and only 18 when she began writing Frankenstein, I knew she was young, but not young. This criticism was a little hard to follow in parts; Ellen began talking about many other authors and pieces of literature, and it became hard to follow the connection. I think she just used too many outside sources in trying to create a connection. I am going to use the article in essay #3 because it really helped me understand another side of the story, a point of view from Mary Shelley herself.

My link is to an exerpt from Mary Shelly’s journal/diary that Ellen refers to quite a lot in her article http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=71208348

My picture is of Mary Shelley. From http://www.nndb.com/people/245/000044113/