In “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, Jessica Hale’s main argument is that Shelley used various relationships such as familial, homosocial, sexual, and racial throughout Frankenstein in order to reveal the social issues during that time period. For instance, Jessica Hale argues that Mary Shelly uses the relationship between Alphonse and Caroline as well as Victor and Elizabeth to show how the society at the time favored a traditional domestic family where the wife was typically seen as submissive and weak objects and the husband was seen as a paternal figure. She also argues that Mary Shelley is trying to convey the idea of the society at the time being that domesticity is discordant with dealing with public affairs because it affects the role of the husband. Another argument that Jessica Hale makes is that Victor is narcissistic in that he created the monster in his own image and the monster desire Victor, which is an extreme form of homosocial longing that forces the exclusion of females.

An example of a close reading is on page 21 when Jessica Hale mentions that Victor in the story describes Elizabeth as “a possession of my own”, which is very effective because it clearly shows that women were perceived as objects. Another example of a close reading is when the Jessica Hale mentions that on page 4, Walton “desire[s] the company of a man who could sympathize with [him], whose eyes would reply to [him]” because it directly shows how erotic desire is used to describe the longing for male companionship.

One secondary source that Jessica Hale uses is The Freudian Body which was used to help Jessica Hale use psychoanalytic theory to create this literary criticism as well as helping Jessica Hale formulate ideas from Freud that can help her analyze Frankenstein more effectively.

Some terms that I did not know were psychoanalytic theory, seafaring, mélange, and libidinal. One of the terms, libidinal is relating to sexual desire, and I google searched libidinal in order to get the definition.

In “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Jessica Hale examines how Mary Shelley connects many different issues such as gender, race and sexuality to the larger context of imperialism and New World slavery. Hale argues that Shelley critiques gender roles in the society by explaining how Shelley uses the idea of “domesticity” throughout the novel to illustrate how women are prevented from accessing the “outside world” that contains “exploration, adventure, politics, public affairs, academia, and intellectualism” (Hale 12). Hale continues this argument by explaining the “homosocial relationship” and demonstrating how throughout the novel, the intimate relationship between two men is more desired than an intimate relationship between a man and a woman (marriage is a “second-best alternative to the intimate male homosocial relationship”) (Hale 13). Furthermore, Hale discusses how the monster is portrayed as an “other” which is used to represent those who are not European and how this racial difference sets the monster as an outcast in the society. Hale then explains how these close readings and critiques of the society in Frankenstein relate to the 19th century society, the time period in which this novel was written.

Hale close reads many different passages from Frankenstein to support her arguments. For her first argument, Hale is discussing the “Domestic and Public Spheres” of both genders and how they play out in the novel’s society. Hale does many close readings to demonstrate how the women are portrayed as weaker than the men in this society. For example, Hale close reads the line “‘like a protecting spirit to the girl, who committed herself to his care’” to illustrate how Alphonse acts more of a father than a lover and how he must give up his public function to take up the role of father/husband. Hale directly quotes from Frankenstein and then proceeds to analyze the meaning and explain how it supports her argument.

Additional to close reading, Hale quotes secondary sources, such as Leo Bersani’s book The Freudian Body to support her argument about suffering and sexuality. Hale uses parts of Bersani’s novel to demonstrate and support her argument that the catalyst of the monster’s sexual desire is the suffering of his first victim, William. Hale uses an idea from an outside source to compliment and help validate her own arguments. It also employs ethos because the audience is likely to trust an outside, published source and thus want to agree with Hale even more.

One term I found while reading that I did not know was the word “mélange.” After looking it up on the online Merriam- Webster dictionary I found that it means a mixture of different things. It also sounded like a french word so I went to wordreference.com and found that it also means a “mixture” or “combination” in french as well, which I thought was interesting.

In her paper “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” the college student Jessica Hale presents the interesting argument of the inarguable homosocial relationships. Her main point with this argument is that “the most intimate relationships on the novel occur not between husbands and wives, but between men and their male friends.” (parr. 5)
Jessica Hale has these exemplary sections of the passage that undoubtedly support her argument of the presence of homosocial relationships. One of the close readings of the passage from Frankenstein is “many a long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley to which I was a devout but nearly a silent listener.” (xxiv) The author uses this passage to describe that probably, Mary Shelley’s experience seeing Lord Byron and Shelley “provided material” (parr. 5) for the proclaimed homosocial interactions in Frankenstein.
Besides referencing her primary source, which in this case is the text Frankenstein itself, Jessica Hale uses secondary sources. She explained Berthold Schoene-Harwood’s perspective when she quotes, “the predicament of the individual male psyche under patriarchal pressure.” (parr. 5) The purpose of this secondary source was to describe, using evidence, that the pressure Victor flees is “the role of a husband and father providing for and perpetually tied to a nuclear family.” (parr. 5)
In the very first sentence of this literary study, Jessica Hale uses the term “encroached.” As an English language learner, one cannot refuse to search up the dictionary for the definition. Not possessing a physical dictionary, accessing the web in “dictionary.reference.com,” the definition of encroached in my own words is to be a able to go beyond the limits the environment establishes.
To recap, Jessica Hale empowers a main argument which she evidences with close reading and utilizes secondary sources and appropriate terms in order to voice her points.

In this paper, Jessica Hale argues that Mary Shelley is trying to break down how women are restricted and objectified in a world where males are typically seen as more dominant, strong, and successful. Hale uses close readings of Frankenstein to give examples of these situations in which women, like Victor Frankenstein’s mother and sister, are treated as lesser counterparts to men. For example, on page 12, Hale analyzes the beginning of Victor Frankenstein’s narrative. She talks about the ways in which his genealogy is strange, and the way he depicts his mother as a submissive, domestic woman, and his sister and an object that he needs to protect. This close reading supports Hale’s argument that Mary Shelley is trying to expose the way which women are treated during this time: weak, submissive, and in need of a protector.

In addition to close readings, Hale also incorporates outside sources to defend her arguments by stating that other readers have shared her opinions. She mentions Deane Franco’s analysis of the gazing of the different characters (all male) and the effect that has in amplifying the importance of the homosocial relationships in the novel. Not only does Hale analyze these glances and stares as important to the significance of the intimate male friendships. She also uses Franco’s analysis to back up her argument that the novel focuses the homosocial relationships to emphasize the role of the male opinion in society at this time.

At first, I did not understand what a homosocial relationship was. I knew that it had the prefix –homo­, which means “one”, and I knew the definition of social, however, I was not sure what exactly it referred to. I Googled the definition, but one could also look for it in a dictionary. A homosocial relationship is a non-sexual relationship between only males in a social setting. This only furthers Hale’s argument that society at this time was male-dominated, as most of the relationships were “homosocial,” and in the context of Frankenstein, friendship with a man is the only thing Victor wants.

Jessica Hale’s “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” examines how the forces of globalization, imperialism and New World slavery have an impact on gender, sexuality and race in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Hale says that the destructive scientific pursuits of Victor Frankenstein show the problems of a world dominated by men. Hale further continues to support her thesis by showing examples of homosocial relationships in Frankenstein. She also explains how Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” tie into the novel by using the correlation of body of the monster, sexuality and death. Lastly, Hale talks about how the issues of gender and sexuality portrayed in the novel have a deeper meaning than that pursued by the psychoanalytic theory. Although Frankenstein can be viewed as a portrayal of the nineteenth century society, Hale argues that Frankenstein is “undeniably a critique of Romanticism, colonialism and imperialism as potentially destructive even deadly, paradigms.”

One example of close reading of a passage from Frankenstein is on page 13 of the criticism, where Hale explores the homosocial relationships in the novel. Hale argues that Robert Walton has a homosocial longing. She backs up this thought with a direct quote from the novel written by Walton, “I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine” (4). Hale analyzes this line and concludes that Walton uses the language of erotic desire to express a longing for a male companion, rather than the longing for a woman.

One secondary source used in the criticism is from Schoene-Harwood’s journal entry “Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man.” She uses a direct quote from his article to further support her thoughts that Frankenstein portrays Homosocial Relationships. By using a quote from this article she gives more validity to what she is saying.

At first glance I did not know what the psychoanalytic theory was. After looking it up on google I learned that it is a method of investigating personality disorders. It also contains the idea that the things that happen during childhood contribute to the way people function as adults. I learned that these theories can be applied to analyzing literature because they can be used to explore textual meaning in the context of the representation of culture in the present day society of the author.

Hale’s key argument through the article “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein” is the notion of pleasure. In the aspect of homosocial relationships, she portrays the idea that prominent male characters, including Walton, and Victor through both the creature and Henry Clerval, as well as the creature itself, exhibit a need and an urgency to find a man or a form similar to their own who can sympathize with them on an intellectual level and to balance and “perfectionate” them. In fact, they go as far to assume the perceived social roles of women such as caretaking and providing a level of intimacy or in the case of the creature, a lack there of.

Additionally, in promoting the concept of pleasure, Hale close reads the quote: “the gaze is the object in which the subject can see himself seeing himself” (14). Here, she moves past the romantic light to which a gaze often represents and into the notion of a mirror. More directly, she characterizes the transparent surface of the eyes as the ability for Victor to see his ego, his desire, and his conscious within another creature. In this case, he is looking upon the corpse of his dear friend Clerval and looking through the eyes of the mirror toward the creation of death, simultaneously imagining his relationship with life and death in the form of his creature.

Hale’s explanation of the “pleasure principle” as argued by Sigmund Freud from the book “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” represents a strong use of a secondary source towards creating additional relevant information and adding credibility (ethos) towards her overarching argument through the work of a famous psychologist. She uses his principle to define the notion that all mental processes are concerned with “an avoidance of unpleasure” or in the same, but opposite notion, “a production of pleasure”. She then uses this to characterizes the drive for sexual desire and deprivation, as well as the creature’s acts of murder to fulfill such needs of pleasure, be it sexually driven or not.

The term sanguinary (16) was unfamiliar to me and upon researching its definition through online dictionaries, I found its meaning to be “involving or causing much bloodshed”.

Surveillance technology, Global Positioning System, Social Media, Technology, Technology, Technology. All this discussion on technology is everlasting. Arguments about how bad it is to the ecosystem, how it makes human behavior be altered, how technology evolves and will eventually destroy itself, how information is easily accessible and how dangers are equally accessible, and the arguments continue. In the discussions, most affirm that there are more cons than pros when it comes to technology, yet, it is with the very means of technology that you, dear reader, are able to access this blog post. Therefore, technology shouldn’t be that downgrading, right?
Contrary to the thought that technology should not be very degrading is Kantaro Tomaya’s point in the article “Why Technology Alone Won’t Fix Schools.” In this article, the author informs on the last paragraph that “what the U.S. education system needs above all isn’t more technology, but a deliberate allocation of high-quality adult supervision focused on those who need it most.” Kantaro Tomaya is implying that technology is not that necessary when it comes to education because what is does the most is distract instead of placing the owner of technology on track. This relates to Gary Shteyngart’s book Super Sad True Love Story when the protagonist Lenny Abramov encounters the sad truth that young ones have committed suicide because their apparats were not functioning to its full abilities. On page 270 of Super Sad True Love Story, Shteyngart approaches this dystopian society with a scene like this: “Four young people committed suicide in our building complexes, and two of them wrote suicide notes about how they couldn’t see a future without there apparati.” When technology has this downfall, it is challenging to see the perks of it.

Toyama, Kentaro. “Why Technology Alone Won’t Fix Schools.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 3 June 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015. .

The article “Digital Romance: The Teens Get It” mainly talks about a research showing that fifty percent of teens usually express interest in someone by friending them, commenting on or liking a post on social media which is also the most common way for lovers to contact each other. This kind of digital flirting shows that some teens are so discouraged from showing emotions that they can not manage face-to-face communication but instead need to hide behind the screens. Though the researchers maintain that most of the effects that social media have are still positive in promoting expressions, I deeply believed in the overall negative influence social media project on human communication.

I think that the fact showed in the research reflects some scenarios described in ‘Super Sad True Love Story’: for example, in page 89, people knew each other not through self-introduction, characteristics or hobbies but through the fuckability, personality and personal preferences showed on the apparat; also, in page 92, girls were too busy looking at men’s ranking to have time to look at real people. Those scenarios lead to a serious thinking that are we still thinking independently or are we manipulated by the statistics on technology? Since the beginning of human history, we knew, recognized and befriended with each other through the feelings generated through face-to-face communication. However, humans’ direct expressions seem to be cut off by the technology as a medium. When whatever we see online could be an elaborately faked impression, human’s contact will begin to have a tendency to deceit and superficiality.

Truly that technology can bring people far away together and give teens confidence to reach out to each other, isn’t it pointless to prefer hoaxing ourselves into believing that technology can promote human contact instead of encouraging people to face each other more bravely?

Julie Beck. “Digital Romance: The Teens Get It”  The Atlantic. Oct 1, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/digital-romance-the-teens-get-it/408364/