In “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein“, the author Jessica Hale made the argument derived from the book that society consisted of two “spheres”, domestic and public, in which women belonged to the former and men to the latter. In order for a man to be an effective husband and father, he had to completely abandon the public sphere of politics, academia, and the like in which women were not allowed or represented, suggesting that they were not capable of higher thought nor held the desire for adventure or public affairs. She also stated that the homosocial relationships between men house a large role in the novel. Men essentially could not find intellectual companionship with women but instead required another man for this kind of stimuli, once again placing women in the box of intellectual ineptitude. This conclusion was derived from the close reading of the line, “I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.” By pointing out how the eyes were commonly thought of as “pools of desire” and long gazes equated flirtation, Hale shows that the longing for a male intellectual companion was analogous to that of the erotic desire for a lover. Hale uses the secondary source of Berthold Schoene-Harwood’s writing. She refers to his work a few times but also builds upon it with her own interpretations and findings from the text to further establish her claims of homosocial relationships.

Unfamiliar terms: nuclear family, Oedipal, libidinal, sadomasochistic jouissance.       Google is always handy in tracking down definitions. I suppose contextual clues may be of some assistance as well. Though it is not commonly identified with this phrase, a nuclear family is simply a standard family unit consisting of parents and children. The definition of this term can be inferred from the line, “Implicit in the very structure of the nuclear family is a hierarchy headed by a father who provides for and protects his wife, and who has complete control over both her and their children.” But if that seemingly straightforward definition still leaves you with doubts, as it did I, well, as aforementioned- Google knows all.