In “Frankenstein and Dis(re)membered Identity,” Eleanor Salotto argues that Shelley uses different techniques to demonstrate how the characters in the novel struggle with identity. Salotto argues that Shelley’s framed narrative demonstrates how characters struggle with having a unified identity because the framed narrative causes the story of each character to come out in pieces. The life story of each character is told by another person, demonstrating how each character cannot even tell his own identities to the audience- it is muddled by another person telling it for him, therefor no character has an intact representation of a unified identity. Additionally, Salotto argues that the fact that Frankenstein is attempting to create a double of himself, the creature is just an excess, muddled version of Frankenstein’s own identity. Because the creature is supposed to represent Frankenstein, the fact that he is created through other, different human parts also represents his incomplete identity. The fact that the creature is made up of all different unoriginal pieces, his identity is not whole either. Additionally, because the creature is supposed to mirror Frankenstein, the fact that Frankenstein is repulsed when he sees the creature illustrates that Frankenstein does not recognize himself or his own identity. The author uses the critic Lacan to extend her argument. She uses Lacan’s work and study of the “mirror stage” to again demonstrate how Frankenstein does not have a unified, intact identity. The mirror stage is when an individual sees his reflection to better get an understanding of “I,” however, by looking at the monster that is supposed to represent himself (thus, it is his mirror), he does not see himself. He sees a monster that he does not want to claim as his or his identity, thus Frankenstein again grapples with his incomplete sense of identity. While this paper goes on to argue several other points, I really enjoyed Salotto’s arguments on lack of identity. While, I knew that I did want to focus on identity, I wasn’t sure what points I specifically wanted to focus on. However, after reading this article I think I want to explore the techniques Mary Shelley uses to demonstrate how the characters lack identity and how this lack of identity has negative outcomes for the characters in the novel.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/stable/30225415?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=((Frankenstein)&searchText=AND&searchText=(Freud))&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D%2528%2528Frankenstein%2529%2BAND%2B%2528Freud%2529%2529%26amp%3Bprq%3D%2528%2528Frankenstein%2529%2BAND%2B%2528Id%2529%2529%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bhp%3D25%26amp%3Bwc%3Doff%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bso%3Drel&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Link of the article: http://jhp.sagepub.com/content/41/4/57.full.pdf+html

“Making Daemons of Death and Love: Frankenstein, Existentialism, Psychoanalysis”
By Will W. Adams, Psychologist

Summary of the author’s argument:
Both existentialism and psychoanalysis play a huge role in the creation and development of the characters in the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The reader might take note of the topics such as death-repression, the return of the repressed and the daemonic. In Frankenstein, the Mary Shelley challenges death (in the living creature Victor Frankenstein has created), love (in the isolation Victor faces), nature (in how Victor evades it), and spirit (in the alterations of real spiritual encounters). The author Mary Shelley was able to channel her conflicts and desires into an everlasting book.

Critic:
The author Will W. Adams uses Rollo May (1969)’s observation that “The daemonic ‘is potentially creative and destructive at the same time’” (Adams 62) In this case, the author is extending what the critic Rollo May suggested. He affirms that “daemonic energy is available for us to take up, respond to, and channel as best we can.” He suggests that the manner in which a person reacts to the presence or the idea of a deamon will affect the outcome of the behavior of that deamon. Will W. Adams says,
“If we respond with openness and understanding, then our daemons tend to be integrated as benevolent, creative, energetic guides to transformation and health. But if we react with defensive avoidance, they tend to appear as malevolent, destructive sources of suffering.”

Develop an angle for your own paper:
I would like to explore the identity of both the narrator Victor Frankenstein and his monster using this article to help me develop a psychoanalysis. By extending, or sometimes refuting, on what the author Will W. Adams portrays in his research, I will be able to formulate my own opinions and have them backed up by other researchers.
In other words, Will W. Adams will aid me to engage in the conversation he forms part of when it comes to the identity and psychoanalysis in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The scholarly source that I am very interested in is called ‘Technology and the Human Limit’. The author is Baker Brownell. This article mainly illustrates the relationship between current technology development and human’s inherent limitation. The author believes that “there are both physiological and psychological limitations conditioning human being.” With no measure in our expansion into the environment and no boundary in our ambitions, we have already transcended our due limitations by overusing thousands of mechanical contrivances to change the world by our wishes.

In the article, when the author talks about the nature of limitations, he mentions one main critical idea of his opinion (no critic’s name) that “by developing technology, our life can have new meaning and experience, so we should regard this extension of limitations as cultural growth.” However, the author strongly refutes by pointing out that “this extension is not enriching but disintegrative and people’s increasing natural tolerance towards drunkenness is an example.” In other words, the author believes that though developing technology and extending human life are seemingly amazing breakthroughs in human history, there is always a cost behind those progressions.

The ideas about technology overuse and intemperate human extension can help me develop my paper. With a similar technology theme, this article mainly focuses on modern aggregations of industrial power’s improper, unconfined dynamic patterns and functional structures in the physical world. Differently, the reflection on technology in ‘Super Sad True Love Story’ contemplates on the technology’s irreversible mental influence on the way people get in touch with each other and the degree people rely on technology in a soon future. These two aspects can perfectly complement each other. I think that combining both the physical and mental influence of technology, my paper can form a better analysis about a progressing relationship between human and technology.

Reference:  Baker Brownell, ‘Technology and the Human Limit’, 1949,3.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/stable/1976553?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=technology&searchText=human&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dtechnology%2Bhuman%26amp%3Bprq%3Dher%2Bmovie%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bhp%3D25%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bso%3Drel&seq=1#page_thumbnails_tab_contents

I would like to write about the sublimation of women in Marry Shelly’s Frankenstein. I find it particularly interesting how the portrayal of women passive parallels the role of women in the 19^th century (the time when the novel was written). I would like to further explore Shelly’s possible criticism of this weak role played by women and the dysfunctions of the domestic hierarchy in regards to family structure.

I found a peer reviewed journal by James Davis titled Frankenstein and the Subversion of the Masculine Voice. This article investigates the sublimation of women in the novel. It expands on the concept of misogyny, “their virtual exclusion of female characters and perspectives purposefully enacts in the novel’s form the misogyny that dooms the male characters to failure.” This idea that the exclusion of women is what led men to failure in the novel can be used in my paper to portray Marry Shelly’s criticism of the role of women in the 19^th century. She can be using this failure of men in the book to encourage the use of the feminine voice in the actual world.

The author of this article references a critics claim in the first paragraph of his journal entry. He uses the critics claim to further support his thesis stating in his works cited that “Several studies have been particularly useful in establishing feminist critical.”

http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/00497878.1992.9978946

In the scholarly article Moral and Myth in Mrs. Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, author M. A. Goldberg identifies topics of loneliness and isolation as she describes the morality of the central characters throughout the novel: Victor, the creature and Walton. In the case of Walton, he lacks an equal member of society who can provide him with a sense of compassion as he pursues his intellectual goals. He feels he retains no social connection from whom he can learn and from whom he can balance the one-dimensional perspective he previously contained. In a similar notion, Victor prior to his meeting with Walton felt a similar attraction to knowledge, curious towards philosophical principles and the hard sciences. This thirst towards his research, however, destroyed any remains of his social well-being through his scientific creation of what would be his servant or “shadow”-like creature. The creature demonstrates a similar theme, describing his pain resulting from the lack of attachment he was provided. The immediate abandonment from his creator and the clear difference/ uniqueness of his form placed him on an island to suffer alone for the duration of his existence. She argues overall that no character retains the ability to healthily function without connection and relationship.

In her article, M. A. Goldberg utilizes an excerpt from an 1817 Review of the book between Goodwin’s Caleb Williams and Frankenstein, extending the notion of isolation of the individual, as well as themes of loneliness which contribute to the moral context of the book that she highlights in her own writing.

This article develops a lot of the same concepts I hoped to address in regards to the isolation felt by the three main characters as a result of their discoveries and the paths of life on which they have been guided. Under this main topic, the article also provides references to biblical stories and myths which provide strong correlation to the messages promoted in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/stable/pdf/30210049.pdf?acceptTC=true

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.