Frankenstein Questions

Please read through Volumes I and II by Tuesday. Below are a list of questions to help inspire you. Feel free to draw from them or to develop and attempt to answer your own. Remember that blogs are due by 9:30 am on Tuesday.

I also want to remind you that you can write on the essay we discussed last class, "Transgendering and _The Monk," if you wish. Remember, that this is a ONE TIME ONLY deal. If you wish to write on this essay, it will also be due by Tuesday at 9:30 am.

Here are the questions:

• We will be discussing this issue much more in depth on Tuesday, but for now consider what this novel might be saying about education. One of the biggest debates during the time in which Frankenstein was written was how to go about educating the populace, and specifically examining the different educational "needs" for both men and women. Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was the “ideal” of man and that we have traded our naturally free state for a condition of social slavery. He argued for a form of education in which the individual would develop without the oppression of authority, in natural surroundings which allowed close links with man’s originally “innocent” state. For women’s education, however, he offers very little insight, and seems to claim that women’s “natural sensibility” should not be “tainted” through any sort of instruction.
Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist philosopher and incidentally Mary Shelley’s mother, had much to say about Rousseau and his claims of the inherent irrationality of women:
“What nonsense! when will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject! If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim.” (From A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792)
To what extent can we see Frankenstein’s monster as the logical extension of these faulty educational practices? To what extent are women, like the monster, constructed by men, and yet struggling for their own self-identity?

• How does the presence of Robert Walton in this book affect the text's treatment of science? What is his scientific motivation and goal? How does it differ from the scientific quest that Victor Frankenstein relates?

• To what extent is the romantic conception of "imagination" involved in Victor's actions as a creator? How might his creation of the Being be a parody of the poetic or creative process -- i.e. a misuse of imagination?

• Why did Victor create the creature? What responsibilities did Victor, as the creator, have toward his creature? Why did Victor abandon the creature?

• What powers does the text attribute to nature with regard to human happiness? Follow out the fluctuations in Victor's relationship to and interpretations of his natural environment.
• Why can't ordinary humans accept the Being's appearance? What does this inability imply about the basis of human community? In other words, why so much emphasis on physical similarity or dissimilarity?

• In Book 2, the Being tells the story of his initial moments of consciousness. Describe some of his first impressions about himself and nature and comment on what you find significant about them.

Some links...

Here's a link to the full text of the Coleridge Review of The Monk. You'll have to scroll down a bit, but it's there.

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/coleridge.reviews

Here's another link to an article you might find interesting:

http://www.theonion.com/content/magazine/how_to_stay_goth_past_50

Have a great weekend, everybody!

THE MONK Questions

Dear Students,

Although I cannot say I will provide questions every week, below are just a few preliminary questions on The Monk to help you get started. You DO NOT have to answer these questions. Feel free to draw from them if you like, or develop your own. I would also encourage you to read each others' responses, as well (a list of links to student blogs is forthcoming). Good luck!

1) “Many young girls, from morning to night, hang over this pestiferous reading, to the neglect of industry, health, proper exercise, and to the ruin both of body and of soul…The increase of novels will help to account for the increase of prostitution and for the numerous adulteries and elopements that we hear of in the different parts of the kingdom” (The Evils of Adultery and Prostitution, 1792)

As we can see from the above sentiments, the leisurely practice of reading was once considered a potentially dangerous, if not downright lascivious, activity. This criticism had a particular trajectory towards the ever increasing female readership in the later eighteenth century, and female readers were often couched in terms of either “peril” or “pleasure” in reference to their reading practices. Although a mass reading public is perhaps commonplace now, in the eighteenth century this transition was fairly new and the “intimate” act of reading was often referred to as potentially subversive politically, socially, and sexually. As Jacqueline Pearson has pointed out in her book Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835, this period saw a “constant elision of textuality and sexuality, especially in the case of women, whose reading is repeatedly figured as a sexual act or to reveal their sexual nature” (87). For your post, consider the many ways in which so-called “subversive” sexual acts or sexuality play a part in The Monk. What are some of the explicit and implicit messages being directed in this novel towards women? What are the tropes or “stereotypes” of women as constructed in the novel. What are the (limited?) roles that women are allowed to play? How are women sexualized (or not) within the novel? How is female sexuality being defined in this novel? Also, how is male sexuality being constructed within this novel? As you read, pay careful attention to actual acts of reading on the parts of various characters in the novel, and explore how reading in The Monk can be potentially "dangerous" or even sexual.

2) These questions about gender and gendered sexuality bring me to my next question. Michel Foucault in his book The History of Sexuality discusses the keen differences between sex (the biological act) and sexuality (the social constructions surrounding the biological act). To put it another way, “sexuality” is what we think of as “sexy,” i.e. being a “sub” or a “dom,” so to speak, leather, fishnets, muscles, cheerleading uniforms, fancy cars, and so on, all of which have very little to do with the actual sexual act, itself. Every society at every moment in history produces certain discourses in terms of defining “sexy” and “sexuality.” For Foucault, ideas of “sexuality” are often couched in terms of “power” and “knowledge.” Explore how The Monk defines a certain type of sexuality in terms of power relationships and in terms of knowledge (or bringing things out into the open). Notice moments of eroticism and examine what precisely makes them so. What sorts of narratives is Lewis producing about sexuality?

3) It is perhaps of little surprise that Lewis was condemned of charges of blasphemy for certain scenes in The Monk. Continue to explore the Lewis’s criticism of Catholicism. To what extent is his criticism religious or philosophical? In other words, in indicting institutions such as monastic orders and The Spanish Inquisition, how does Lewis actually work to define Enlightenment principles of rationality, law, and free will?

4) Make an attempt to apply some of the theories and ideas we read this past week from Hogle and Freud's essay to this novel. What does this novel suggest about class, revolution, sexuality, female representation, the "blurring" of boundaries, etc? What might be considered some "uncanny" moments in the novel? Where do we see a "return of the repressed" in the novel?

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

Dear Students,

Congratulations on making it this far. Please make sure that you become a "follower" of my blog (look for the button to the right of your screen). If you're going by some sort of pseudonym, please notify me via email. If you need some inspiration for beginning your blogs, there is a list of ideas in your syllabus. Good luck!

Best,

Colleen