Skip to main content

THE GOTHIC: Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (Novel)

Goddess bless Mary Shelley, mother of my genres. Part of why I took this class was to try and get my feet wet in some of the roots and core ideologies of the genres in which I write. Discussion on this, for example, has helped push me into wanting to pivot the genre of my thesis from straight contemporary fantasy to wanting it to be more neo-southern Gothic. 
  But I digress! The gothic traditionally is very concerned with questions of mortality. Namely how to escape it or the repercussions of attempting to do so. I’m pushed to think of Edgar Alan Poe, who is constantly grappling with death and what it means in his work—probably because everyone he ever looked at died of TB within 20 minutes of meeting him. 
     Mary Shelley wasn’t too much better off, so Frankenstein doesn’t come as a shock. But Frankenstein asks what happens when you try to cheat or outwit death. Frankenstein’s monster is the bastardization of life itself, and Doctor Frankenstein realized that immediately, passing out upon its creation. (Why couldn’t people stay awake, by the way? That’s such a Gothic trope, but what were they eating?)
  What separates Frankenstein from other gothic works that I know of (besides the fact that it effectively invents a new genre altogether) is that it also deals with questions of parental agency. How responsible is Victor for the thing he created? By cheating death, is he now a father? Shelly’s relationship with her mother’s death and with her father was screwed to high hell, but it is interesting to think how she simultaneously sees the creation of life as its own type of cheating death, but also as a type of danger and a thing to fear.
  But when your birth is what killed your mother, what can you expect?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Assessment

What is your reaction to what you just read? One of the most important aspects of storytelling, as I’ve learned it so far, is that you cannot hand the readers everything at once. Confusion is what keeps the reader reading. Questions, intrigue. And while I don’t want to shade Mother Octavia—who the hell am I to shade Octavia Butler anyway?—I think that she may have gone too far onto the other end, at least for me. I went in confused, intrigued. I came out with a feeling of some unresolved confusion.   So as far as I gather, the Tlic…exist…and implant humans with their eggs. They used to herd them like cattle but backed out before deciding on the joint family gig.   I don’t feel like I have a concrete enough grasp on what the Tlic are, what an N’Tlic even is, what T’Khotgif Teh is. I feel like I grasping at something like I’ve grabbed a handful of sand and things are slipping through my fingers.   It’s important to point out that style and taste is a thing worth
Post a Comment
Read more

WITCHES AND WOMEN: Akata Witch (What Sunny Saw in the Flames) by Nnedi Okorafor (Novel)

Before sinking my teeth into Akata Witch , I want it on the record that the book’s title is different in Nigeria and in the UK because of the fact that the word akata is an anti-African-American slur more or less translating to “cotton picker.” Little meaning would be changed if the title were “Nigger Witch," an anti-Black slur. All that is to say, hearing that repeatedly made me itchy. But, as an akata, I will continue using that version of the title in my writing.      Comparing Akata Witch to Harry Potter feels almost like a disservice to Nnedi Okorafor’s work. Mostly because I actively resist the idea of comparing an Author of Color’s work to a white author, basically saying ”it’s this thing but brown.” (Which, by the way, is what everyone seems to say about Roshani Chokshi’s Gilded Wolves , calling it a brown Six of Crows .) It puts an idea on the table that fails to really encompass the depth that Akata Witch goes to. For example, one of the biggest things that stick ou
Post a Comment
Read more