Lady and the Monster by Mary Poovey - Article Example

Mary Poovey’s Lady and the Monster Mary Poovey’s article entitled “’My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster”, presents her argument that the distinctive narrative style used in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein allows her to express her ambivalence regarding her ideas about writing. Through this unique style, Shelley is able to participate in what she considers a masculine trait in putting forth assertive ideas as well as maintain the submissive stance of a proper lady of the 19th century. Throughout her article, Poovey indicates where Shelley’s story can be considered masculine in terms of its style and in its presentation of content as well as how she manages to include the proper role of the woman within each aspect of the novel. To do this, Poovey analyzes the various ways in which the narrative carefully distracts the reader through the emotional content of the characters’ individual stories and hides the feminine subplot under symbolic language. The first step Poovey takes in arguing her point is to show how the book presents a masculine approach to writing, including some of the Romantic era ideas regarding psychology and development, then she moves on to show how Shelley interweaves her own conservative, ‘proper lady’ feminine voice throughout the story. The anonymous nature of the 1818 manuscript allowed reviewers of this version to speculate as to the gender of the writer, which is where Poovey turns first in making her point that the story follows more masculine lines. According to Poovey, the first reviewers of the book determined the gender of the writer must have been male because the story didn’t have the obvious morality lessons that were always included in any writings produced by a woman during this time period. In addition, the novel traces a classical Lockean developmental model, which was the contemporary psychology of the day, in describing the maturation of both Frankenstein and the monster. This is seen as they each enter the world as a blank slate, tabula rasa. Their sense of identity, emotions and perceptions of self are all derived on the part of Frankenstein from the experiences he gains from interactions with friends and family, or through observation and isolation in the case of the monster. “Like most contemporary Lockean philosophers, she asserts that circumstances activate and direct an individual’s capacity for imaginative activity; the inclination or predilection thus formed then constitutes the basis of identity” (253). Frankenstein grows up in a happy home, learning everything his parents allow him to learn, not deviating from a normal upbringing until the ‘accident’ in which he first discovers the natural sciences and the occult, through which he will eventually come to his destruction. The monster, by contrast, gradually learns to recognize the things in the forest, learns through painful experience his rejection from society and through careful observation of the De Lacey family the important areas of life he is missing because of his monstrosity. However masculine the book appears to be at first, though, Poovey demonstrates how these aspects of Shelley’s writing prove to be only surface impressions when compared to other novels written in this time period. According to Poovey, compared with the other works being produced at the time, the novel can be considered conservative by “call[ing] into question, not the social conventions that inhibit creativity, but rather the egotism that Mary Shelley associates with the artist’s monstrous self-assertion” (252). Through her questioning of the artist’s assertive qualities in placing their creations up for the world to see, Shelley manages to imbue her work with a single morality question that has given birth to a number of additional questions as a result. “More in keeping with eighteenth-century moralists than with either William Godwin or Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley characterizes innate desire not as neutral or benevolent but as quintessentially egotistical” (253). Far from keeping morality out of her novel, Shelley’s Frankenstein is instead an entire morality lesson told in parts that must be correctly pieced together to gain the full advantage. By laying to rest any arguments that Shelley’s novel is unfeminine even in surface structure, Poovey goes on to illustrate how Shelley manages to demonstrate the conventional ideas of a woman’s crucial role in society throughout the novel. This is primarily shown in the novel as well as in Shelley’s contemporary society as a woman’s role in regulating the household and providing a crucial sense of balance to everyone in it. “She sees imagination as an appetite that can and must be regulated – specifically, by the give-and-take of domestic relationships” (253). This argument is supported by facts from the novel, such as Frankenstein’s willful removal from his family when he allows his imagination to run wild and create the monster and his egotistic thoughts regarding the gratitude this creation would have to feel for him, its creator. It is further supported following the creation of the monster when Frankenstein dreams of Elizabeth as his wife, who turns deathlike under his kiss and then into the corpse of his mother, symbolizing the death of the family unit in the absence of female cooperation, thereby forcing the creature into monstrous proportions. Shelley’s intention is underscored further, Poovey points out, by the fact that Frankenstein is only able to begin thinking of life and a future family again once he has released the monster created in his egotism, but because he has already allowed his ego loose into the public, he will never be able to regain the peace of his earlier years. According to Poovey, assertive ego, let loose on the world, murders Frankenstein’s family just as it severs relationships, emphasizing the classical importance of self-denial in the arms of a filial family unit. Having illustrated her points regarding not only the reasons why the novel was seen as unfeminine on its surface as well as how it emphasizes conventional ideas regarding the role of women among Shelley’s contemporaries, Poovey turns her attention to illustrating how the unique narrative style of the story serves as the driving force behind Shelley’s brilliance in finding an appropriate balance. The egotism of the artist is expressed in the symbolic forms of both Frankenstein and the monster, who are each unable to escape their grotesque characteristics which Shelley sees as the artist’s willingness to inflict their vision upon the greater public. They are at once the symbol of artistic achievement, the height of imaginative power and the undesirable, ugly manifestation of an ego grown beyond proper proportions. This also illustrates the Romantic vision of the woman, forced to embody the image of family and goodness as well as remain the vehicle of exterior desire while still the reviled vehicle of evil; “forced to be a symbol of (and vehicle for) someone else’s desire, yet exposed (and exiled) as the deadly essence of passion itself” (258). In writing such a horror story, Shelley was embodying the very idea of self-assertion by putting public voice to her story, yet by couching it in terms of the first-person narrative, she was also able to distance herself from these events just as the evil effects of the monster are distanced from its creator. “Because Shelley realistically details the stages by which the creature is driven to act out its symbolic nature from its point of view, the reader is compelled to identify with its anguish and frustration … by separating self-assertion from its consequences, she is able to dramatize both her conventional judgment of the evils of egotism and her emotional engagement in the imaginative act” (255). Through these various points, Poovey is able to prove that because of the narrative strategy used, in which her conventional as well as radical ideas could be expressed as manifestations of proper relationships or lack of them, Shelley is able to avoid the type of egotism expressed by the artist symbolized in the character of Frankenstein and thus allow her work loose on the world with a minimum of disaster. “Shelley is able to create her artistic persona through a series of relationships rather than a single act of self-assertion; and she is freed from having to take a single, definitive position on her unladylike subject. In other words, the narrative strategy of Frankenstein, like the symbolic presentation of the monster, enables Shelley to express and efface herself at the same time and thus, as least partially, to satisfy her conflicting desires for self-assertion and social acceptance” (261). Works Cited Poovey, Mary. “’My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster.” From The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Read More