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Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards A Feminist Figure Of Humanity?

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In the award winning article, “Passages in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Cynthia Pon addresses masculinity and feminism in terms of conventions, ideals, and practices (Pon, 33). She focused on whether Mary Shelly's work as a writer opened the way to a feminist figure of humanity like Donna Haraway argued. The article has a pre-notion that the audience has read Frankenstein and Haraway's article. Pon has a slight bias, due to her passion as a feminist writer. It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it. …show more content…

Pon is explaining Haraway's article and the studies she did on Sojourner Truth. Pon begins discussing her first argument on masculinity on page 35. “In her novel, heroic quest is presented almost in naked parody”. Each great quest, is not seen as accomplishment. After saying that Pon goes on to use the example of Walton. He was alone but was intent on conquering his fears and being brave. He grows tired of his company, but only wants to talk to someone that is like himself. She furthers goes on to say “Masculine humanity only recognizes its own image on the bias of gender, class and race (Pon, 36)”. A person must be European, wealthy and a male for Walton to consider talking to him. The placement of these paragraphs was logical and gave examples to support how Frankenstein displays

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