Critical approaches to Frankenstein

Anne Mellor- sees [Victor’s fear that the female monster would be “ten thousand times more malignant than its mate”] as Shelley critiquing the patriarchy and that ‘”what Victor truly fears in female sexuality”.

Alterves -"Carter shows women's sexuality simply as a response to male desire"

Nancy Armstrong- “[The femininity of the novel is not the product of] female nature nor even female culture, strictly speaking…but of ideology and cultural myth”

Heenaba Zala- “Her novel reproduces the traditional opposition of masculine and feminine, speech and silence”

Helene Cixous- “A feminine text can’t be predicted, isn’t predicatable, isn’t knowable, and is therefore very disturbing”

Virginia Woolf- “[Contradiction is a necessary conditiom of women in a patriarchal culture since that culture is an[ ill-fitting form”

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

Nancy Armstrong- “[The femininity of the novel is not the product of] female nature nor even female culture, strictly speaking…but of ideology and cultural myth”

2017 Wilton- Woman perhaps represents Mother Nature and would help teach the monster or act as an external force upon the situation (ie. Providing music via accordion, or singing)

Kenneth Branagh- “Gothic tales seem to satisfy a deep seated facisnation with the limits of human experience”

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

2017 Wiltons Music Hall- Uses lots of light imagery with filament bulbs

Kenneth Branagh- “Gothic tales seem to satisfy a deep seated facisnation with the limits of human experience”

Susan Sniader Lanser- “[The framing device buffers] Frankenstein’s horror story with Walton’s relative normalcy”

-Punter -"Shelley is the first to invite sympathy fot the monster, to allow him to speak and explain the origins of his monstrous behaviour"

Shelley- “[her desire to] curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart”

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

Punter -"Shelley is the first to invite sympathy fot the monster, to allow him to speak and explain the origins of his monstrous behaviour"

Karen Ann Hohne- “The complex structure of the novel, the multiple voices-within-voices that filter the action, although an integral part of the ‘story’ function at times as an estrangement or distancing device”

Michael Garner- “Shelley create a situation in whch it becomes impossible to know the reliability of a given narrator” à Unreliability of men

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

Bethany Wright- Oedipus complex

Karen Ann Hohne- “The complex structure of the novel, the multiple voices-within-voices that filter the action, although an integral part of the ‘story’ function at times as an estrangement or distancing device”

Michael Garner- “Shelley create a situation in whch it becomes impossible to know the reliability of a given narrator”

Jason Marc Harris- “Mary Shelley’s device of the frame-story of the explorer…adds credibility to [the] internal voices”

-Punter -"Shelley is the first to invite sympathy fot the monster, to allow him to speak and explain the origins of his monstrous behaviour"

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

Punter -"Shelley is the first to invite sympathy fot the monster, to allow him to speak and explain the origins of his monstrous behaviour"

Alterves -"Carter shows women's sexuality simply as a response to male desire"

Blathard-Smith –“A careful reader of the novel might argue that the monster of the novel is actually Victor”

Kenneth Branagh- “Gothic tales seem to satisfy a deep seated facisnation with the limits of human experience”

Fred Botting- “uncertainties about power, law, society family and sexuality dominate in Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcibly in political revolution”

Mary Favret- “In spite of its title, Frankenstein refuses to be solely Victor Frankenstein’s story”

Karen Ann Hohne- “The complex structure of the novel, the multiple voices-within-voices that filter the action, although an integral part of the ‘story’ function at times as an estrangement or distancing device”

Michael Garner- “Shelley create a situation in whch it becomes impossible to know the reliability of a given narrator”

-Punter -"Shelley is the first to invite sympathy fot the monster, to allow him to speak and explain the origins of his monstrous behaviour"

Shelley- “[her desire to] curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart”