Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein Gender Criticism Perspective
Homework Questions: 335:
Explain: "Feminist and gender criticism are not polar opposites
but, rather, exist along a continuum of attitudes" (335).
What distinctions can be made between the different critical beliefs
found at the two ends of this continuum?
Explain: "One purpose of gender criticism is to criticize gender
as we commonly conceive of it, to expose its insufficiency and inadequacy
as a category" (335).
336:
Explain: "Gender is not a property of bodies or something originally
existent in human beings" (336).
Explain: "Gender is . . . a construct, an effect of language,
culture, and its institutions" (336).
What are the "essentialist" and "constructionist" views (336)?
337:
What is the extreme constuctionist position?
What, according to some "French-influenced Anglo-American critics,"
is the "essential relationship between sexuality and textuality" (337)?
338:
What does it mean read or write like a man or like a woman?
339:
Explain: "Sexuality, commonly thought to be a natural as well
as a private matter, is in fact completely constructed in culture according
to the political aims of the society's dominant class" (Qtd. in Murfin
339).
Explain: "Sexuality is a continuum, not a fixed and static set
of binary oppositions" (339).
