Each of the questions below, in referring to Frankenstein, may also be treated as referring to any of the films studied in the course.

 

Essay Questions:

1. Locate several different critical analyses of Frankenstein that view the text through the same theoretical lens (e.g. Marxist readings: Gardner, Michie, Moretti, O’Flinn; postcolonial readings: Bohls, Malchow, Spivak). What are the similarities and differences between them? What issues are at stake in each case? Is there any one reading you find particularly persuasive?

 

2. One of the major themes of literary theory is the notion of unconscious modes of expression and levels of meaning in all texts, whether according to a psychoanalytic model of repressed aggression and desire, or a political model of unconscious ideologies of gender, sexuality, race, class and ethnicity. Taking one of these aspects as your focus, how does a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, or ‘reading ‘against the grain’, reveal a ‘textual unconscious’ in one of the texts from the course?

 

3. Liberal humanism, in order to read Frankenstein as a universal and timeless myth of the fate of the ‘over-reacher’, must deliberately suppress important aspects of the text and its production. Do you agree?

 

4. In the structuralist account of language and culture, things only have meaning and value by virtue of their position within a structure of differences. How might this model be used to understand the situation of the monster in Frankenstein?

 

5. Post-structuralism holds that the binary oppositions that structure language and culture are fundamentally unstable. Frankenstein is a narrative in which such oppositions are unusually prominent. With reference to ONE of these binaries, how might a deconstructive reading show the fundamental instability of meaning?

 

 

 

6. A classic Freudian interpretation of Frankenstein would see the monster, not as a real entity, but as a symbolic embodiment of a repressed aspect of Victor’s psyche. Outline one way in which a Freudian approach to Frankenstein would work. What are the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach?

 

7. According to Peter Brooks, the monster ‘must trust wholly in the symbolic order’. How does Lacanian theory help understand the relationship between subjectivity and language in Frankenstein?

 

8. How might EITHER Freud’s triad of id-ego-superego OR Lacan’s triad of Real-Imaginary-Symbolic be used to produce a theoretical reading of Frankenstein?

 

9. In undermining the biological distinction between male and female, Victor Frankenstein threatens to upset the entire gendered structure of meaning on which human culture rests. The tragedy is not that he does this, but that he does this without the slightest understanding of what he is doing. Discuss.

 

10. Frankenstein is a searching examination of ‘the ideology of the biological family’ (Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism) and therefore of endless interest to feminist criticism. Outline ONE of the key questions raised by the novel and the way this has been explored in feminist criticism.

 

11. ‘At first sight, it would seem that Frankenstein is much more striking for its avoidance of the question of femininity than for its insight into it’ (Barbara Johnson, ‘My Monster/My Self’). Discuss.

 

12. According George Haggerty, Frankenstein doesn’t just lend itself to queer readings, it would be more reasonable to ask ‘what is not queer about Frankenstein?’ Is this an overstatement? In your response consider Frankenstein’s treatment of ONE of the following themes: gender normativity, heteronormativity, or reproductive futurity.

 

13. Marxist and postcolonial critics differ on whether Frankenstein exhibits a progressive or a conservative attitude towards the political struggles of the working class and colonized peoples, respectively. With reference to EITHER a Marxist or postcolonial theoretical perspective, do you read the novel as progressive or conservative, or are there other questions that are more important?

 

14. ‘Transhumanism has roots in secular humanist thinking, yet is more radical in that it promotes not only traditional means of improving human nature, such as education and cultural refinement, but also direct application of medicine and technology to overcome some of our basic biological limits’ (Nick Bostrom, ‘Transhumanist Values’: <http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html>). How might the humanist/transhumanist distinction between ‘education and culture’ and ‘medicine and technology’ inform your reading of Frankenstein?

 

 

 

15. ‘The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential’ (Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto). How might Haraway’s notion of the cyborg inform a reading of the relations between science and technology, gender and power in Frankenstein?

 

16. The relation between humans and nature is clearly of central importance in the plot of Frankenstein. How does ecocriticism help us better understand this aspect of the novel?

 

17. How does disability theory alter your perspective on Frankenstein?

 

18. According to David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, disability is often used metaphorically, as a ‘narrative prosthesis’ which ultimately marginalises disability itself. With reference to this critique, how do you read the presentation of dis/ability in Iron Man?

 

19. All technologies are gendered, not in themselves, but because they emerge from and enter into social relations that are always already gendered. Discuss with reference to Iron Man or Ex Machina.

 

20. Drawing on one of the theoretical models studied in the course, how would you use it to develop a reading of the monster’s autobiographical account in Frankenstein?