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The Struggle Between The Classes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Question: A text’s relevance is not limited to the time and place in which it was written. Discuss with reference to one text, and one reading approach you have studied.

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1831) follows Victor Frankenstein on his scientific quest to create ‘life’. First written in 1818, the novel was born into a world of class conflict and rapid industrialisation. The ideological struggle that frames Shelley’s literary style facilitates a Marxist approach, which seeks to gauge the political motivations of the work, and determine the extent to which the work explores struggle between the classes. Marx's writings on alienated labor allows an analysis of Frankenstein in an economic and political subtext that might otherwise …show more content…

The creature’s composition foremost reflects his representation of the working class. He is composed of the ‘parts of many people’ and lacks the ‘unity of natural organisms’ which fulfils the Marxist assertion that the proletariat ‘is recruited from all classes of the population’. Shelley writes that Frankenstein ‘collected bones from charnel-houses… the dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials.’ (pp58) Not only can the reader see the segmentation of the monster's creation, but can hear the harsh tone of contempt that Frankenstein uses when describing his workspace and creation as ‘filthy.’ Shelley’s use of fricatives depicts a ‘monster’ so mutilated and unnatural that it becomes an outcast based solely on its hideousness. The creature’s description cements that it is a symbol of all ‘others’ and ‘minorities’ that are discriminated against due to appearance. Shelley’s comment about society’s rejection of the ‘ugly’ has racial connotations concurrent with the revolutionary spirit of the era. It transcends 1818 however and relates to racial discourse today, exemplified by personas such as Donald Trump and his promised “Ban on all Muslims”. Exterior differences, on some level, will always be a cause for division amongst human beings, which is expressed by the Creature’s appearance as a symbol. Thus, Shelley’s imagery and its associations through a Marxist approach establish the themes of Frankenstein to be highly relevant 200 years since its

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