Romantic Contexts

‘Living in a Material World’:Frankensteinand new materialism

“…First, in both Walton and Victor, Shelley juxtaposes self-identities of glory and achievement with rejection of connection to others, particularly family, and in Victor’s case to his rejection of the creature. Both characters show a strong similarity to Shelley’s description of Rousseau, who showed ‘“the elevation and intensity of delicate and exalted passion” while also “neglecting the first duty of man by abandoning” his family’ (Shelley, as cited in Hogle 2016, 46). Second, Hogle notes the similarity of the creature to the imagined child in Emile , ‘a child’ who ‘at its birth’ had ‘the stature and strength of a grown man’ (46).…”

“…Focusing on the creature as a paradigm of the Cyborg would help students in learning about different critiques of this kind of narrative whether it occurs in science or the humanities 3. For example, in ‘Romantic Contexts’, Hogle (2016) showed that Shelley includes just such a critique in her allusions to Rousseau. First, in both Walton and Victor, Shelley juxtaposes self-identities of glory and achievement with rejection of connection to others, particularly family, and in Victor’s case to his rejection of the creature.…”

“…Hogle points out that Safie is meant to allude to Sofie, the character in Emile who receives a separate and unequal education in comparison to the title character. Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote in relation to Sophie that for Rousseau women ‘are at once sentimentalised and viewed anxiously as deformed or monstrous’ (Wollstonecraft as cited in Hogle 2016, 47). As the creature is placed in a position which connects him to Safie, both female and racially other, and as the creature also plays the role of unpaid worker or slave to the DeLaceys, Shelley suggests that Rousseau’s ideal of the natural man is shown to rest on the exclusion of these groups from education, and thus from full subject status.…”