Anne Mellor "Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein"
** Homework Questions ** 274:
Explain: "By stealing the female's control over reproduction Frankenstein
has eliminated the female's primary biological function and source of cultural
power" (274).
Do you agree that "Frankenstein's implicit goal" is "creating a society
for men only" (274)? What evidence does Mellor provide to support
this claim?
275:
Explain: "As a consequence of this sexual division of labor,
masculine work is kept outside of the domestic realm; hence intellectual
activity is segregated from emotional activity" (275).
What are the consequences of this division?
276:
In what ways is it true that Caroline Beaufort "incarnates a patriarchal
ideal of female self-sacrifice" (276)?
How is it true that "women cannot function effectively in the public
realm" (276)?
How is the DeLacey family "an alternative social organization" (276)?
How are they "a social group based on justice, equality, and mutual affection"
(277)?
How is Frankenstein "Mary Shelley's political critique of a society
founded on the unequal distribution of power and possessions" (276)?
How does this critique contain "the suggestion that the separation from
the public realm of feminine affections and compassion has caused much
of this social evil" (276)?
277:
How does Safie represent Mary Shelley herself?
Other Discussion Questions: 279:
According to Mellor, what causes Victor to end creation of the female?
How is his destruction of the female creature a "violent rape"?
Explain: "Uninhibited female sexual experience threatens the very
foundation of patriarchal power" (279).
280:
Explain the reference to Fuseli's "The Nightmare" (See image above)
What is Victor's "most profound erotic desire" (280)?
281:
Explain: "In place of a normal heterosexual attachment to
Elizabeth, Victor Frankenstein substituted a homosexual obsession with
his creature" (281).
How does the creature realize Victor's "own most potent lust" (281)?
282:
How does Nature "resist" and "revenge" herself upon Victor's attempts
to "rape" her?
How does Nature use electricity to secure this revenge?
284:
Explain: "Mary Shelley envisions Nature as a sacred life-force
in which human beings ought to participate in conscious harmony" (284).
Explain: "As an ecological system of interdependent organisms,
Nature requires the submission of the individual ego to the welfare of
the family and the larger community" (284).
285:
Explain: "Where men have tended to identify moral laws as abstract
principles that clearly differentiated right from wrong, women have tended
to see moral choice as imbedded in an ongoing shared life" (285).
How are the DeLaceys "an archetype of the egalitarian, benevolent, and
mutually loving nuclear family" (285)?
With whom do sons and daughters identify?
286:
Explain: "Frankenstein's failure to maintain keeping, to
preserve 'a calm and peaceful mind' (p. 51), is thus in Mary Shelley's
eyes both a moral and an aesthetic failure, resulting directly in the creation
of a hideous monster" (286).
