Extraordinary Stories

How Frankenstein Became a Literary Classic

More than a century after its publication, there was a shift in perceptions of Mary Shelley’s “minor horror story”

由Courtney Suciu.

什么是文学的工作“经典”？我们如何确定哪些文本被认为是“伟大的，”值得关键话语，重要的是在学校教授，这是一个共同文化的有影响力的一部分？

这些是David Fishelov的问题¹considered in his article “The Indirect Path to Literary Canon Exemplified by Shelley’sFrankenstein。”

Fishelov noted the traditional view that it’sbecausea literary work is considered valuable by critics and educators that it becomes culturally influential and is deemed a “classic.”

But, according to the scholar, the canonization of Mary Shelley’sFrankensteinunfolded in reverse.

Instead, it was the evolving culture of the 1970s and 1980s that influenced the way scholars and educators thought of the novel, he argued. The women’s movement and increased awareness of “Other” perspectives – points of view considered outside the traditional mainstream – changed the way readers understood Shelley’s 1818 novel. This shift triggered critical reconsideration ofFrankenstein, resulting in its inclusion into the English literary canon.

那么，怎么了Frankensteinbecome a classic in Western literature nearly two centuries after its first publication?

弗兰肯斯坦在流行文化中

“为了更好地了解某些作品如何在文学佳能中获得股权，我们应该扩大我们的观点，并采用文化文化的多维模式，”Fishelov写道。

By taking this approach, Fishelov looked at the popularity of Shelley’s novel and the novel’s influence in mass culture, even as critics dismissedFrankensteinas “a minor horror story” for most of its history.

Fishelov explained, among factors that contributed to this early reception, “Shelley’s literary reputation was overshadowed by that of her husband,” the influential rock star of the Romantic movement, Percy Shelley. For this reason,Frankenstein最初在危急雷达下飞行，学者解释说，“小说没有产生积极批评的累积体系或从当代文学精英的升值升值。”

然而，Fishelov指出，“从第一个出版物，这部小说引发了一系列艺术对话，特别是戏剧表演形式的流行文化。”雪莱的工作抓住了公众想象力。从1821年至1986年起，新颖的近100次各种各样的 - 并且通常浇水的下降阶段改编，以及几部电影，包括詹姆斯鲸，主演的鲍里斯卡洛夫指挥的标志性1931版。

“One can reasonably assume that it was the popularity of Whale’sFrankensteinthat lead to a renewed interested in the novel and to the publication of four new editions in the 1930s,” Fishelov wrote. However, this renewed interest in the novel by the general public did not reflect an interest among scholars or educators.

And what about the novel’s resurgence in the 1970s? Fishelov suggested this second wave of popularity indicated that perhaps our radically changing culture was finally ready for Mary Shelley and her revolutionary contribution to literature.

Fishelov observed an emerging interest in the 1970s among readers and critics “to pay more attention to the writings of women from past centuries” which fueled a desire to “rediscover” and “recover” Shelley’s literary reputation.

In the figure of Shelley, feminists recognized a woman struggling with issues related to motherhood, autonomy and creativity in a male dominated society.

Feminism and Shelley’s biography

自20世纪70年代以来，弗兰肯斯坦的女权主义分析主导了奖学金，受到作者的生命和经验的影响。BBC纪录片²Mary Shelley: The Birth of ‘Frankenstein“为什么Shelley的背景已经过度响起了这种洞察力：

Mary Shelley’s intellectual gene pool was a rich one. Both of her parents were revolutionary thinkers. Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the founder of feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft was a unique woman, beautiful, fierce, independent…Even by today’s standards, her philosophy is still radical.

Shelley的母亲在出生后不久死了 - 一个创伤，在整个生命中困扰着作者。在她自己的生育和母性的经历中也被融为一体。根据Anne Mellor的文章The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley³。

For Mellor and other scholars, this experience is reflected in the novel’s motifs of parenthood and procreation, and it’s references to nightmares and loss. For Mellor, Viktor Frankenstein’s “total failure as a parent” is the story’s central theme, and the “novel relentlessly tracks the consequences of such parental abandonment."

But other feminist scholars have been more interested in understanding how Shelley’s authorship has historically been trivialized, even as the monster she created became a pop culture icon. In her article “Hail, Mary, the Mother of Science Fiction,”⁴MEGEN DE BRUIN-MOLÉ探索了舞台和电影适应如何与Shelley的阶段和电影改编这么多的相似之处Frankenstein“while still claiming kinship with it.”

如何如此大规模，“休闲”普及破坏了Shelley的创作 - 以及她作为创造者的角色？以及如何将性别因素陷入历史上减少遗产作为作者？

De Bruin-Molé explained how Romantic notions of artistic greatness, which prevailed at the time Shelley was writing, “often deliberately excluded female artists, whose work was considered lacking in the masculine effort and skill required for genius…and where ‘great’ female authors did appear, they were regarded as exceptional and unnatural.”

这种态度的残留物在文学奖学金中徘徊，直到20世纪70年代的女权主义运动引发了妇女和其他边缘作家的作品的兴趣和欣赏。

And who better than Frankenstein’s monster to represent the struggles and experiences of “Others” who have been abused and diminished by society?

Monsters and marginalization

“Monsters are beings, objects, and ideas that live on the edges of law and bureaucracy, often hybrids of that which is included and that which is excluded, the sacred and the profane,” Sheryl Hamilton and Neil Gerlach wrote in their article “It Won’t Always Be Wrong: Morality and Monsters in Legal Rational Authority⁵。”

从这个角度来看，怪物可以被理解为任何威胁要破坏现状的实体，或者主流社会被认为是适当的，自然和好的 - 如浪漫时代的女性作家，因为德布林摩尔·解释说，将被视为“特殊和不自然”。

同样地,弗兰肯斯坦的怪物被认为是a fearful creature, a human-like being but also, having been created and not born, abnormal – a “hybrid of which is included and that which is excluded, the sacred and the profane.”

As such a being, the creature of Shelley’s novel “recognizes society’s injustice when he is rejected and abused for his deformed body,” Brittany Baron argued in “For What Crime Was I Driven from Society?: Material Bodies in Hays’sThe Victim of Prejudice and Shelley’s Frankenstein。⁶”

她简单地解释了他参与社会的努力，在一个被视为低于而被视为少的身体上，“尝试[S]拒绝社会的约束并超越其边界。”作为回应，“社会与恐怖反应，将这些生物视为不可接受。”

According to Baron, “Shelley uses the male creature to provide a voice for the otherwise voiceless female characters in the novel.” She pointed out:

He faces the same problems as females in the nineteenth century: he may not interact with society, he lacks the agency to own property and other material possessions, and he faces prejudices based on his material body.

Of course, it wasn’t only women in the 19^thcentury who were so punished based on their material bodies. Race, gender, sexual orientation, size, religion, ethnicity and ability –have all been factors historically (and into the present day) for determining who has a voice, who is accepted, who is singled out for abuse and who is ignored.

According to Fishelov “the figure of the monster related to a contemporary preoccupation with marginal voices in society in general and with the figure of the Other in particular.”

As social movements of the 1970s – including women’s liberation, Black freedom, gay rights and protections for people with disabilities – strove to create a more inclusive society, perceptions of Frankenstein’s creature also evolved. The horrifying villain depicted in Whale’s film and in other pop culture contexts was returned to the context of Shelley’s novel and came to instead signify the horrifying repercussions of social alienation.

And, consequently, Shelley’s “minor horror story” became an essential part of the English literary canon, frequently taught in schools and the subject of on-going critical discourse – as well as a source of inspiration and pleasure for generations of bibliophiles, horror fans and sci-fi aficionados.

进一步研究：

查看Danny Boyle的生产Frankenstein,可以从National Theatre Collection, wasdescribedbyThe Guardianas “a humane, intelligent retelling of the original story.” Critic Michael Billington wrote, “as a piece of staging, it is brilliant.”

屡获殊荣的作者Jeanette Winterston的最新小说，Frankisstein- 最近的“雪莱小说的耀眼性的耀眼性 - 也已经过去了reviewedThe Guardian。Critic Sam Byer’s wrote it “is a fragmented, at times dazzlingly intelligent meditation on the responsibilities of creation, the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the implications of both transsexuality and transhumanism.”

笔记：

1. Fishelov，D。（2016）。由Shelley的Frankenstein示例的文学佳能的间接途径。CLCWeb，18（2）。可用proquest一个文学。
2. Mary Shelley: The Birth of Frankenstein。Downes, M. (Director). (2003, Jan 01).[Video/DVD] BBC Worldwide.proquest一个文学。
3. Mellor, A. K. (2003).制作一个'怪物'：弗兰肯斯坦的介绍。在E. Schor（Ed.），剑桥队的剑桥，剑桥（第9-25页）。proquest一个文学。
4. 德布林 - 莫雷，M。（2018）。'Hail, Mary, the Mother of Science Fiction': Popular Fictionalisations of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in Film and Television, 1935–2018。科幻电影和电视, 11(2), 233-255,355.proquest一个文学。
5. Hamilton, S. N., & Gerlach, N. (2010).'It Won't Always Be Wrong': Morality and Monsters in Legal Rational Authority。法律，文化和人文学科，6（3），394-419。proquest一个文学。
6. Barron, B. (2015).‘For What Crime Was I Driven from Society?’ Material Bodies in Hays's the Victim of Prejudice and Shelley's Frankenstein。性别论坛, (54), 1.proquest一个文学。

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Courtney Suciu is ProQuest’s lead blog writer. Her loves include libraries, literacy and researching extraordinary stories related to the arts and humanities. She has a Master’s Degree in English literature and a background in teaching, journalism and marketing. Follow her @QuirkySuciu

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