The Experience of Difference: (in)Tension and Realisation in Theodore Roszak’s The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34767/HG.2017.07.02Keywords:
Frankenstein, female experience, perspective, differenceAbstract
The article looks at Theodore Roszak’s The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein from the perspective of an attempt at privileging female narrative voice, largely overlooked in Mary Shelley’s original. It is argued that despite noble aims the author’s reliance on stereotypical binaries (man-science/woman-nature) effectively silences the developments of significant strains of feminist critical discourses. Such an approach - together with exploring the otherwise reversed, but still biased binary male/female oppositions - accounts for an ineffective attempt at (re)creation of female experience.
References
Cixous, Hélène Cf. H. [1976]. The Laugh of the Medusa, [in:] V. B. Leitch et al. (eds.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W.W. Norton, New York & London 2001.
Collings T., Frankenstein and Feminism: Contemplating the ‘Memoirs of Elizabeth Franken-stein’, [in:] Anthropology of Consciousness, vol. 22. Issue 1, 2011, ‘American Anthropological Association’.
Johnson B., My Monster/My Self, [in:] M. Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. By J. Paul Hunter, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London 1996.
Mellor A.K. [1988], Posessing Nature: The Female in ‘Frankenstein’ in M. Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. By J. Paul Hunter, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London 1996.
Poovey Cf. M. [1984], ‘My Hideous Progeny’: the Lady and the Monster, [in:] M. Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. By J. Paul Hunter, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London 1996.
Roszak T., The Gendered Atom. Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science, Conari Press, Berkeley, California 1999.
Roszak T., The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, Bantam Books/Random House, Inc. New York 1996 [1995]; the text used in throughout the article is the 1996 paperback edition.
Shelley M., Frankenstein, ed. By J. Paul Hunter, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London 1996.