Through depicting four kinds of relational trajectories (familial, homosocial, sexual and racial) and using psychoanalytic theory, Hale addresses Shelley’s implicit concern on the forces of globalization, imperialism and New World slavery in her article, “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”. My favorite part is the familial part in which Hale illustrates that the domestic and extra-familial spheres are not mutually exclusive. She uses the relationship between Alphonse and Caroline and between Vitor and Elizabeth to prove her idea that this family in Frankenstein is an embodiment of the universal gender inequality in which wives submit to husbands’ protection and care and young girls are given like prizes to men.

One close reading of Frankenstein is about Victor’s thoughts when he encounters the gaze of the monster, “A new species… would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”  This quote shows completely Victor’s narcissistic quality. Actually what he loves about he creature, the monster, is his own psyche reflected in the monster’s gaze. In addition, the secondary source that Hale uses is a quote from Schoene – Harwood,”men who feel secure enough in their masculinity to display feelings of domestic affection…who seem perfectly balanced in their manliness which incorporates rather than categorically excludes the feminine.” This quote explains the homosocial relationship between Alphonse and Henry and reason that men exclude feminine from their own companionship. However, Hale does not use the quote to explain her idea; instead, she develops her own idea based on part of the quote. This quote only serves to as a beginning of her point that Henry and Alphonse both have feminine, nurturing qualities.

When I first saw the word ‘homosocial’, I misunderstood it to have a similar meaning as ‘homosexual’. But as I read the following paragraphs, I find that homosociality actually does not mean an erotic, sexual relationship between same sex but rather an most intimate and intense relationship in which both men express a longing for one another without actual sex drive. This is my understanding of this word, but I was not very sure about it so I looked it up in Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, ‘homosociality’ means same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, etcetera.

In sum, by using close reading, secondary source and appropriate terms, Hale expertly analyzes the four trajectories in Frankenstein.

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.

In her article, Jessica Hale introduces unorthodox views that interpret subtle connections within the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In her analysis of how issues related to gender, sexuality, and race play a role not only in the novel but also on a larger societal facet, I found her argument about the existence of homosocial relationships in Shelley’s novel to be the most interesting. To summarize, Hale believes that male characters in the novel are connected by “intimate and intense relationships” amongst each other. Whether in talking about Robert Walton’s platonic connection with Victor or Alphonse Frankenstein’s ties with his friend Beaufort through his nurturing of Caroline, Hale argues that the presence of homosocial relationships reveals the “inherent instability of the institutions of family….that society sougth…to establish as stable and immutable in the 19^th century”. Hale provides evidence by quoting passages from the novel such as “I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me…” by Robert Walton. By giving a thorough analysis she shows that because men would seek for the companionship of other men, without necessarily needing interactions with females, there exist homosocial interactions in the novel that alter conventional views about “domesticity”. Hale also employs the “They Say” technique to draw statements from other authors, such as Schoene-Harwood, in an attempt to give a more concrete opinion about certain homosocial relationships. For example, while Schone-Harwood claims that men such as Alphonse and Henry do not show signs of femininity, Hale notes that they indeed do, through their “nurturing qualities”.

In the eyes of writers, certain words may have deeper meanings than their proper definition. In reading this article, I struggled in immediately understanding the meaning of domesticity. Hale goes on about explaining how the novel portrays this concept. In reading further, I understood that domesticity symbolizes the different roles that men and women play in family, whether at home or in public. Though Hale gives a straightforward definition at the beginning of the section Domestic and Public Spheres, I continued to use context clues in understanding the word’s domesticity relation to characters or certain plots.

Jessica Hale’s “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” argues that the homosocial relationships in Frankenstein make a statement of the inability of women to reach a certain level of intellectual and intimate connections with men in the nineteenth century.  In the novel, male intimacy is the primary choice, and marriage is then seen as a secondary choice, which is used in exposing the strengths and inadequacies of the nuclear family.  The homosocial desire found in Shelley’s Frankenstein serves to define the separation of the domestic female role from the external male role that is prevalent in the nineteenth century.

Hale close reads the specific passage “I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine” to emphasize that the erotic desire is for a male companion and not a wife or sexual partner, even though the man Walton dreams of serves an unromantic purpose (Shelley 4).

A secondary source of “men who feel secure enough in their masculinity to display feelings of domestic affection… who seem perfectly balanced in their manliness which incorporates rather than categorically excludes the feminine” (Schoene-Harwood 16), which is utilized by Hale to create a “they say, I say” statement that expresses agreement to the feminine and nurturing qualities displayed, but disagrees with the incorporation rather than exclusion of the feminine.  She uses it to support her argument and provide clarification and verification to her ideas.

One unfamiliar term that I came across in the same section was “mélange,” which is used in a sentence describing the comparisons between Victor’s homosocial desire for Clerval and his paternal desire for the child he created.  I used contextual evidence to deduce that it meant a combination, and verified it by looking it up on dictionary.com, where the definition says a mixture, medley.  The easiest way to track down a definition for an unfamiliar term is generally to use a dictionary, which have become very accessible due to the internet.

Jessica Hale’s primary argument is that anxiety about family and individuality lead to more prominent social issues, in addition to concerns about globalization, imperialism, and slavery. Hale argues her position using psychoanalytic theories and direct quotes from Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. On page 12 of Hale’s article, “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” under the subtitle “Domestic and Public Spheres,” Hale makes many direct references to the text, Frankenstein. In the first paragraph, Hale inserts direct quotes such as “like a protecting spirit to the girl, who committed herself to his care” (18) and “it was an almost unquestioned premise that…both natural and divine law endowed the father with patriarchal authority as ‘head’ of a household” (60), and cited them both as such. Hale continues to cite direct quotes from the book throughout the rest of her article. Particularly on page 12, Hale cites from pages 17 and 18, and discusses the abnormal family unit. On page 13, Hale writes, “Schoene-Harwood identifies Alphonse and Henry as “men who feel secure enough in their masculinity to display feelings of domestic affection…who seem perfectly balanced in their manliness which incorporates rather than categorically excludes the feminine” (Schoene-Harwood 16).” This is Hale’s secondary source, quoting another article about the text she has chosen to analyze. There are a few words that are unfamiliar to me in this article, such as dichotomy, precludes, chattel, homosocial, and capacious. Definitions can be found using dictionaries such as Cambridge Free Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and Oxford-English Dictionary. For example, one foreign word that I encountered in Hale’s article was capacious. I went on to oed.com (Oxford-English Dictionary) and found the definition: capacious: adj; Of such size as to take in or hold; able to contain; having the capacity of or to; able to hold much; roomy, spacious, wide.

In Jessica Hale’s article “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, she reveals four “relational trajectories” known as familial, homosocial, sexual, and racial in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by including and referencing to contemporary criticisms. The author then suggests that “these four levels of human interconnectedness” oppose the stability which the society “sought to establish” among families and races in the nineteenth century and thus exposing the fragility behind. For instance, the author conveys the idea of gendered dichotomy through the domesticity of Victor’s family. She declares that the excessive care from Alphonse, Viktor’s father upon his mother is a representative example of gender discrimination. Although the scene creates a harmonic impression of Viktor’s family, the undue submission of Caroline, Viktor’s mother demonstrates the stereotyped image of a female character in the nineteenth century. With a submissive attitude, Caroline surrenders to social expectations and thus isolating herself from the “outside world”. The author illustrates her point of gendered dichotomy with this passage and emphasizes the sexism behind the seemingly stable domesticity. In addition, the author proves her idea of racial discriminations lurking in the novel with Anne Mellor’s criticism in order to highlight how politicians from the nineteenth century identified the monster with racial terms. People from the past not only viewed the monster with speciesism but also racism. In the novel, people clearly recognize that the monster has “the shape of a man”, but they refuse to consider the monster as human being due to his “physical differences” which is a typical example of racism. In order to enhance her argument from different perspectives, the author indicates that Mellor has associated the monster with a “racial threat” as well, noting the way in which the politicians identified the slaves with Frankenstein’s monster.

There are many words that sound unfamiliar to me in this article such as “psychoanalytic” and “interconnectedness”. I have different approaches to identify these words based on how unfamiliar the word is to me. For example, a word like “psychoanalytic” sounds really unfamiliar to me, so I go to Merriam-Webster, which is an online dictionary and look this word up. This word basically means a psychological or mental analyzation. However, for a word like “interconnectedness”, which sounds less unfamiliar to me, I look for roots in that word. In this case, “inter” means connected and exchanging, “ness” is just a suffix for nouns. After identifying the roots, I am able to guess the meaning of the words, which in this case means a synergistic connection.

One of Hale’s main arguments is that the monster created by Frankenstein is a symbol of racial minority and the fears associated with those groups. First, Hale presents significant historical context to her claim, analyzing slave rebellions at the time Shelley writing the book, as well as historical claims of abolitionists to connect Frankenstein to Britain: a parent who failed to nurture their child into adulthood. Hale then addresses common stereotypes in the world to Frankenstein’s fears of the monster, from calling it a “savage” to worrying about the monster and its assumed wife procreating in the new world and having a new race of “devils”. This was a key argument in Hale’s paper.

One example of close reading of the text is when, as mentioned before, Hale talks addresses Frankenstein’s fear of the monster giving birth to an entire race in the new world. Hale first addresses the scientist’s strict fear of creating more monsters, but goes on to examine the racial subtext. Hale concludes the monster to be an allegory for the slave trade bringing Africans to America and leaving them to procreate in the new land, making an entirely new, large population.

One secondary source Hale uses is an essay by Malchow about Frankenstein depicting race in the nineteenth century. Hale uses this analysis to expand her own by signifying that the monster is not just an explicit “Negro monster” by that of an “other” race (18). This enhances Hale’s argument and clarifies to the reader that Shelley did not choose a race for the monster, yet it can be implied that a completely new race can produce the same messages.

In reading a quote from the book, I came upon the word “sophisms” (18). After using context clues and researching on the internet, I found the word means: deceiving arguments.

Jessica Hale makes the argument that the nuclear family portrayed in Shelley’s Frankenstein is a comment on both the strict gender binary of 18th century English society and of the dangers in separating the public sphere and private sphere. She discusses how the nuclear family is based on a power inequality between the elder Frankenstein’s that leaves Caroline (and eventually Elizabeth) trapped in a domestic role. Then by showing how the domestic life and public life are displayed as incompatible Jessica comes to the conclusion that Shelley was commenting on the set roles women were forced into.

In Her section discussing Freud and Frankenstein Jessica does a close reading of pg 122 of Frankenstein. In this passage The Monster is examining a small portrait of Caroline Beaufort around William’s neck

In the same section she uses a secondary source to support her argument. The source is a book written by Leo Bersani called The Freudian Beauty. In this book Bersani discusses a specific idea, that Hale then brings into her argument to strengthen her claims.

There were a few terms that, though I could understand within context, I had trouble pinning a direct definition. One term was “chattel”. It is defined as “a moveable possession: any possession or piece of property other than real estate or a freehold.” To go about finding this definition I first went to the Oxford English Dictionary’s online website and searched it. There were a variety of definitions available and even the etymology, however, after reading through them this seemed to be the definition that made the most sense in context.

In her paper, Jessica Hale makes a notable argument that women in Shelly’s novel Frankenstein have been objectified to become man’s possession to embody domestic perfection. This is critically reflective of the social structure of the Victorian Era in which ‘both natural and divine law endowed the father with patriarchal authority as ‘head’ of a household’. She goes further to mention that the acquisition of women as means of building the ideal family has made homosocial relationships even more outstanding in the novel as people crave for relationships more profound than that of ‘gendered inequality’

She finds effective evidence of her claims in the novel. By noticing the tragic death of all female characters in the novel, Hale makes the claim that the untimely death of the female characters in actuality represents importance of ensuring the “tranquility of domestic affections” to be as riddled with internal tensions and conflicts as the nineteenth century family itself.

Hale also makes use of secondary sources to further strengthen her argument. By quoting another scholar not only does she convince the audience of the reliability of her claim but also gives depth to her paper by developing upon other’s claims. When she mentioned “As Schoene-Harwood notes, “Alphonse’s fatherly protection effects his wife’s domestic imprisonment within the framework of enduring female indebtedness and gratitude”” and goes further to say “It does this and more.” she is effectively using other’s perspective as the foundation of her thesis.

Racialized sexual fear was one of the terms that baffled me. Frankly I still don’t know the exact definitions but my guess is that it means ostracizing someone as a sexual criminal because of their race.