How does class figure into the conception of separate spheres?
Explain: "The novel shows that the private virtues inculcated
in the home by the domestic affections cannot arm men against the public
sphere unless they emulate these feminine and domestic qualities"
(314).
316:
Explain: "For Mary Shelley to name herself as Frankenstein's
author, then, might be to endanger her status as honorary man, to risk
having her 'masculine understanding' impugned as 'femeninely expressed'"
(316).
317:
Explain the connection between Mary Shelley and the "oppressively feminine
women" of Frankenstein.
In what ways is Alphonse a "feminine patriarch" (317)?
318:
What is the "myth of perfectability" (318)?
319:
Describe Dussinger's conception of the Frankenstein family as "a paradigm
of the social contract based on economic terms" (Qtd. in Smith 319).
320:
Explain the difference described on this page between Alphonse and Victor
as fathers.
Explain: "Frankenstein, I believe, does show the importance
of parental nurture, but it does not thereby absolve the child of agency
in and responsibility for, what we might call self-creation or self-nurture"
(320).
321:
Explain: "As Victor's murderous "spirit" the monster reveals the
dark side of the Frankenstein family's oppressive domesticity" (321).
322:
Explain: "The domestic enclave of affective relations turns out to be
not an alternative to but a mirror of the public sphere of economic relations"
(322).
323:
Explain: "Women function not in their own right but rather as signs
of and conduits for men's relations with other men" (323).
324:
Explain: "To trace Victor's move from alchemy to chemistry is
thus to trace the tensions and conflicts of contemporary gendered science"
(324).
325:
What is a paradigm shift? How is "Victor's move from alchemy to chemistry
via the electricians . . . a paradigm shift in miniature" (325)?
Explain: "As the monster enacts the insurrection of subjugated sciences,
he also enacts Victor's rebellion against domesticity" (325-26).
327:
Explain: "The pertinent distinction is not between false science (alchemy
or natural magic) and true science (chemistry) but between a discredited
form of science and a newly dominant scientific paradigm" (327).
330:
Explain: "The workshop itself--not a domestic space but not quite an
institutional setting--indicates Victor's difficulties in escaping the
domestic sphere so as to create a masculine professional identity" (330).
