Stereotypes In Mary Shelley's In Body Work

The story of Victor Frankenstein is one that has been thematically studied over and over. Mary Shelley, author of said work, is actually the inventor of science fiction. With this novel she created an entirely new genre, but perpetuates the same feminine physique stereotypes that are detrimental to contemporary society. The question is, does she do this on purpose to bring light to the role of women in society, or does she subconsciously preserve sexist stereotypes within her own narrative? In Body Work, a novel about objects of desire in the modern narrative, the author poses questions of how imagination strives the body and how language, stories, and form define it. Within the excerpts about Frankenstein, Brooks delves into his analysis

Storytelling is often thought to be only about the language, but a large part of a narrative is the body language associated. In a story with three narrators, the importance of physique is important to note since the body influences the value of how you are perceived. Brooks writes that, “Frankenstein concerns an exotic body with a difference, a distinct perversion from the tradition of desirable objects. The story of this ugly, larger-than-life, monstrous body raises complex questions of motherhood, fatherhood, gender, and narrative.” Brooks believes that Mary Shelley’s deviance from statistically usual images of the body is the exact characteristic of the narrative which propagates the central issues of the novel─ opposition of sight and speech. This opposition of speech having influence over the body, is a point Brooks incites by providing the scene of Victor and his Monster’s first meeting as evidence. The blend of language and body is important, as the Creature shielding Victor’s eyes from his horrible face, is the metaphorical representation of that central point, the of opposition between sight and language, how the body responds

This absence of precedent leaves a myriad of options of stereotypical family and also biblical speculation. Brooks argues that Adam was made in God’s image, but what is Eve? Eve was made from Adam. Akin to Frankenstein, Brooks highlights that Victor makes “Adam” but the creation of man from man would be his Eve. Brooks points out that the Creature “radicalizes” the situation of Eve, who is another creation of nature, one without a model. Brooks also asks, What is a monster? Which he answers is that which eludes gender definition. A sense which Brooks speculates Shelley uses to, “socially defy gender roles and transgress the law of castration that defines sexual difference.” Brook goes even further to say that the Monster's demand for recognition by his father could then be read not only as desire for the absent mother, but as a wish to be a sexual object for the father. Giving the example that the absence of the mother is a dynamic gaffe that causes the sexuality of the body to become twisted. Brooks elaborates further, exploring the conviction of Justine, a character Frankenstein’s Monster frames for his crimes. As Brooks states, “The Creature plants the mother's portrait in the folds of her dress and flees, with the reflection: "The crime had its source in her; be hers the punishment!" The claim is curious and excessive, since Justine is in no manner the "source" of William's murder, which takes