Contact info:

email: kschmidt2@ltu.edu

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Final Paper kai.docx 

Rough Draft:Schmidt RD.docx

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, society creates a monster that displays some of the most human characteristics that people know today. Throughout Shelley’s life not only did she become this monster to those around her but she also placed in society through her writing the belief that these characteristics are human. Culturally, a woman’s role has been to be suppressed. Mary Shelley tried to alter this in her writing and also in her life. In her novel she created a version of her ideal human; which was rejected from society. In her actual life, Shelley was also altering the view of women. She was writing a novel in a time where women were supposed to sit, look pretty, and maybe take care of the household. She had run off with her lover, fled the country, and now she was interacting with intellectuals and creating more influential works than they were. Shelley was proving to future generations that women didn’t have to be suppressed; they could be individuals with lives. She was trying to decide what was human and in the process became a human being.

            In 1818 Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was published. In the novel the character Victor Frankenstein creates a monster. Surprisingly, this monster appears more human than even the one who created him. He is rational and well educated on the classics, much like Mary Shelley herself. Throughout the entire novel parallels are drawn between Shelley and this monster; which only strengthens the bond between them. As Shelley created this monster as a different version of herself she shows her insecurity that by writing her novel she is turning herself into a monster in her own society. In her novel the monster is rejected; not only by the one who creates it but also by everyone who sees it. Throughout her own life, Mary Shelley has been rejected. She was rejected by the one who created her because her birth initiated her mother’s death. Those around Shelley rejected her simply for being female and so she could not participate in educated discussions, however, she was self educated and listening to these discussions only furthered her own education. She was rejected again, this time by her father, when she eloped with Percy Shelley, a poet. While with him she wrote Frankenstein and met the educated intellectuals of the time. Again here, she was most likely rejected by the intellectuals as not being able to write anything quite as well as they could for they were formally educated and well traveled and she was not. This influenced her writing style, especially in her narrative of the monster. Instead of simply being a created person, he became an educated one who talked in prose that neared poetry, an obvious influence from being constantly surrounded by poets.

            Victor Frankenstein also was a bit more culturally advanced than most men, however, he was still a man in her novel. Frankenstein’s wife finally meant something more to him than just being a baby machine. If we want to draw parallels between Shelley’s life and her novel, Victor Frankenstein would be her father who rejected her from higher learning and opportunities simply on the basis that she was female. Victor Frankenstein’s mother had died, which meant that to him, nothing else could create life so he had to do that instead. This made Elizabeth basically useless to him except for the fact that now he could actually care about her. His wife was his focus, his muse, and his companion instead of just someone that he used. He was actually upset for a little bit when the monster killed her until he remembered that she was useless and so not that important. Again, in Shelley’s life this was her mother being killed and leaving her father to deal with the monster. But, the important part of Elizabeth was that she wasn’t suppressed. And Shelley’s mother was a woman’s rights activist, the least suppressed a woman could get in the 19^th century. She wrote him letters and actually acted upon a few of her thoughts. She started to be a bit more human than women had been before in literature.

Even the female monster was more advanced than the male monster. She was actually feared by Frankenstein because Shelley imagined a female with the powers of the male monster to be more powerful. By putting these views out into society Shelly risked overstepping her bounds as a woman in the 1800s. The novels she had grown up reading and had based Frankenstein off of, however, had only lead to failure and punishment by overstepping boundaries. Prometheus and Paradise Lost both ended with punishment for those who pushed too far in society. In her avoidance to be punished in the same manner as those from her education, Shelley hid these societal advancements in her novel as to simply be viewed as an author, which was risky enough. Even in her novel, the one character that doesn’t end in tragedy or death is Victor’s brother Ernest who becomes a simple farmer and never outsteps his bounds, just as Shelley is attempting to portray her writing. Or it simply could just be that she doesn’t even recognize how dangerous her ideas are as she is writing them. Or that in the modern day society feminists read into Shelley’s works a bit too far and draw conclusions to simply further themselves and feel important and intelligent.

            The painting ‘A Young Woman and a Cavalier’ by Cornelis Bisschop is a great representation of the view of women in the 17th century. The use of line in the paining shows the differences of the genders in what they value. The man is admiring the woman and viewing her with as possessive a stare as the woman is admiring the vase and worldly possessions.  This battle of the sexes is its own cultural collision because they both view the world entirely differently and somehow have to live alongside each other no matter what part of the world they are in.

(The lines created in this painting are full of actions. They are all set on diagonals. The male is laying his arm on the female's shoulder creating the line that implies tenderness. The female is putting out her arm to hold the pitcher, which implies action as well. This is more of the action of wealth, however, and implies the misuse of the carpet on the table instead of on the floor. The implication of wealth is a European concept in a Western implied painting. The other line created is from the female’s eyes to the wealth object which is showing how messed up society is and how that conflicts with the carpet. The male’s eyes are in a line to the female, which shows a different kind of wealth, probably not a better kind. He has a lot of loving lines.)

            The painting also can be related to Shelley’s life because she is super cool. She had to overcome this view of women in society where the men possessed them as the woman in this painting possesses the piece of pottery. Her father had possessed her, Percy Shelley had possessed her, the poets she met thought her below them and so they attempted to possess her, and all of society just simply was in an agreement that women could be owned. But, Mary Shelley rose above this and wrote a novel that no other female of the day was writing, they were all writing fluff that would sell to men. She surpassed her father’s possession and in the writing of not only Frankenstein but also all of her other novels she rose above her husband and the other poets that she met because her novel is the one still read today, not these unnamed poets.

            And then, I guess, conclude with something else. And be like, ‘Marry Shelley a bad ass’. Oh, and Frankenstein was cool too.

I know that I still need to do sources and stuff, but this is basically just my brain child...

new sources:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_for_early_modern_cultural_studies/v013/13.4.brown.pdf

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_for_early_modern_cultural_studies/v004/4.1.sussman.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3735719?seq=2

http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/chronologies/mschronology/chronology.html

Journal 7:

Frankenstein’s wife was finally something other than just a baby machine. His mother died which meant that nothing else in his life could create life so he had to do that instead. This made Elizabeth basically useless to him except for the fact that now he could actually care about her. His wife was his focus, his muse, and his companion instead of just someone that he used. He was actually upset for a little bit when the monster killed her until he remembered that she was useless and so not that important. But, the important part of Elizabeth was that she wasn’t suppressed. She wrote him letters and actually acted upon a few of her thoughts. She started to be a bit more human than women had been before in literature.

In real life, Shelly was also altering the view of women. She was writing a novel in a time where women were supposed to sit, look pretty, and maybe take care of the household. She had run off with her lover, fled the country, and now she was interacting with intellectuals and creating better works than they were. Shelly was proving that women didn’t have to be suppressed; they could be individuals with lives. She was trying to decide what was human and in the process became a human being.

These read like introductory paragraphs - they sum up your argument for the reader. And they're very strong.

In your body paragraphs, you'll want to look at the details you mention here. How is Elizabeth's identity created through letters? How is it created through actions and spoken words? How does sexuality shape that identity (or fail to shape it)? It sounds like you'll also need biographical information on Shelley for this reading. Here's a link to the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley timeline and online resource site created by Romantic Circles (a good, peer-reviewed journal). In your body paragraphs (unlike the introduction), you'll want to balance evidence from the text/biography with a close reading and analysis. 

Journal 6:

Working thesis: Culturally, a woman's role has been to be suppressed. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mary Shelly tried to alter the way society viewed women through their literary works and accomplishments as writers. 

Journal 5:

Scholarly articles I'm going to use will focus on the role of women, Frankenstein, and Love in the time of Cholera.

For Frankenstein there's an article named 'Less than Men' http://www.jstor.org/stable/40649597

For the role of women, I found a really cool article called 'Genius beyond Gender: Novalis, Women and the Art of Shapeshifting' http://www.jstor.org/stable/3735719

For Love in the Time of Cholera I found an article about Marquez's use of illness which is relatable to the novel,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/modelangrevi.108.1.0162

Journal 4:

The topic I'd like to explore for my essay would be the role/oppression of women. I think the best literary works for that would probably be Frankenstein and Love in the time of Cholera. In Frankenstein I'd analyze the way that Mary Shelly wrote the novel and all the influences that she had in her life. For Love in the time of Cholera I'd analyze the way that women are viewed in Marquez's society and how his writing style reflects that. For artwork, I'll probably use what I did in journal 3 because I enjoy the cultural collision and it also can relate back to Shelly and the objectification of women in Marquez's time.

Journal 3:

The lines created in this painting are full of actions. They are all set on diagonals. The male is laying his arm on the female's shoulder creating the line that implies tenderness. The female is putting out her arm to hold the pitcher which implies action as well. This is more of the action of wealth, however, and implies the misuse of the carpet on the table instead of on the floor. The implication of wealth is a European concept in a Western implied painting. The other line created is from the females eyes to the wealth object which is showing how messed up society is and how that conflicts with the carpet. The males eyes are in a line to the female which shows a different kind of wealth, probably not a better kind. He has a lot of loving lines.

Journal 2:

http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DP146467.jpg

I couldn't get the image to copy over so I posted a link.

This is 'A Young Woman and a Cavalier' by Cornelis Bisschop, a Dutch painter in the 1600s. The portion of this that is about cultural collisions is that the carpet in the painting is an Eastern design but the painting itself is Western. In the East and the West carpets had very different uses. In the East the carpets were used on the floor and then the West changed that and utilized them on tables with fragile and precious items. This completely changed the utility of the rugs from actually doing what rugs do to being a symbol for wealth.

Journal 1:

I'm thinking about using 'A Doll's House' , Love in the Time of Cholera, and A Grain of Wheat for my final paper. I've previously read all three of them and actually have experienced how they portray cultural collisions. If I believe another text we discuss in class portrays cultures better than any of these three, of course I'll amend my decision. I really enjoy the way that 'A Doll's House' displays the collision of the old and new female cultures. Love in the Time of Cholera is interesting because it compares the old and new ways that marriage exists. Also, Marquez was friends with Castro, which is just cool. A Grain of Wheat is really different from the other books because it's oppressive and lots of people die and it's depressing! It's showing colonialism and how England and Kenya interact/ their cultures collide.

Here are the summaries.

http://www.shmoop.com/dolls-house/summary.html

http://www.shmoop.com/love-in-the-time-of-cholera/summary.html

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-a-grain-of-wheat/