Repairing Contradictions: Blog Summary #2

Since there were only 2 posts, each about wildly different things, this summary won’t be as comprehensive as the last one. However, I noticed a contradiction about the status of the creature in these blog posts as opposed to in my previous blog posts, my initial reading, and my term paper. These last two posts have shown the creature in a much more negative light than before.

The last two posts have seemed to point out the creature’s inhumanity or negative traits much more than I had emphasized them earlier. Upon completing Frankenstein, I was very sympathetic to the creature and its struggles with its own humanity. But the last two blog posts focus on both the creature as an unavoidably uncanny being and as a model of neocolonialism. Due to class discussions about feminist interpretations of the creature, I’ve also made an effort to try and refer to the creature with the neutral pronoun “it” rather than “he.” This is because the monster does not have a distinct gender (we do not even know the creature’s genitals). But have my own interpretations sucked the humanity away from the monster? With some refinement, not quite.

Namely, if I refine the argument from the last blog post (“The First Step to Neocolonialism”) to respond to some of the feedback. This was by far my most popular post from a feedback perspective, and the comments have forced me to revise some aspects of my argument. The creature may not ever be pure subaltern or pure colonizer: that would be an essentialist viewpoint that Spivak would despise. Rather, the creature’s composition mirrors the composition of postcolonial society. The collection of different parts that make up culture (colonizers and colonized) is similar to the collection of different body parts which make up the creature. But it is this hybridity in the creature that leads to something similar to neocolonialism. It still contains parts of the subaltern, but because of the colonial discourse it has absorbed, its future role as a subjugating force is more apparent. I should have been more clear about the creature as a mimic, leading to the titular “first step to neocolonialism.”

However, this may still seem like a negative interpretation of the creature, for how can one sympathize with a neocolonial subjucator? Well, it’s important to note that this is only part of the creature. The creature’s hybridity allows for both subaltern and colonial power to exist in the same being. His struggle to pull out of a subaltern role is complicated by the colonial discourse. This ends up perverting his assertion of empowerment, much like how he struggles to find his humanity as an uncanny being. We sympathize with the creature’s struggle, not the creature’s actions or symbolic status. He is not rigidly something to be feared as a neocolonialist presence or uncanny creature or revolutionary commodity, but something to be sympathized with as it tries to break out of these traps.  Because of this, different theoretical interpretations of the text can reveal one basic truth in the construction and effect of the novel. How wonderful to see the universality of a sympathetic creature.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…

In my most recent post, I vehemently defended my argument (at least in the comments) that the creature’s apparent behavior did not make it a subaltern character. The question is: Why? Why is it that exposure to identical conditions (discrimination, apathy, ignorance etc.) yielded a meek Safie and a rebellious Monster? Even a cursory examination of these two subjects reveals the only significant variable that changed: the characters themselves. But what was it that was so different between Safie and the Creature? To answer that would take us to the defining moment of a character’s development: the Mirror Stage.

According to Lacan, the mirror stage first manifests itself during infancy. A child who is aware of its uncoordinated motor skills looks into a mirror and sees something more than a reflection. It sees itself as a whole. In a manner of speaking it looks “up” at its ideal, imaginary self. And with the reality of its own fragmentation close on its heels, the child quickly dismisses the differences between itself and its perceived double, and instead adopts the reflection as something to strive towards. Now, the infantile mirror stage only incorporates obvious, physical parities. However as a person matures, society starts to play a part. The person sees in the mirror an ideal image that has been augmented by social judgments on aesthetics. And out of fear of rejection and fragmentation from society, and in hope of total acceptance, the person keeps striving towards his/her imaginary double.

Similarly, the meekness and involuntary conformity of the subaltern comes from its latent optimism for eventual elevation. The subaltern does not, however, sympathize with the lack  that its image invokes. This is because the image is not a product of society, but of the colonizers/patriarchy. But the subaltern toils under colonizers’ expectations nonetheless. There is something to be said for the optimism that the mirror stage inculcates in every human. Like Spivak’s widow and Safie, the subaltern continues to choose paths that are the lesser of two evils in hope that one day the image it sees in the mirror will become real and lead it to freedom and acceptance.

But in case of the creature, the mirror stage is different. Unlike the infant, the creature is the epitome of physical prowess. However the image it sees in the water is that of a sum of parts. Where the infant looked up to its imaginary self as an escape from fragmentation, the creature (literally) looks down and sees itself as disarray personified. There is no ideal to strive towards. Optimism has become redundant. The awareness of its true self has set the creature free from any expectations. This freedom is sadist and damning, but it is freedom still. Where the subaltern perpetually strives to crawl towards the light at the end of the tunnel under mountains of expectations, the creature’s realization of reality blasts away the entire range altogether. So when it chooses to flirt with the idea of peace with the DeLaceys, or to condemn Justine, or to kill Victor, it is merely exercising its freedom like no subaltern can.

The Influence of the de Laceys

Throughout the semster we have viewed Frankenstein through many different lenses of literary criticism in an attempt to discover what could be signified by this historical and influential text. The novel as a whole is significant, and we tend to use the different forms of criticism to evenly analyze the many different parts of this work, but when I look back at my blog posts, I find that I often chose to focus on the monster’s interactions with the de Lacey family as a central point to my analyses.

In regards to the de Lacey family, a very interesting parallel is occuring. On one side of this are the monster’s violent mood swings that he experiences upon his interactions with the family: just as Safie’s music “at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes” (107), the observances of the de Laceys “were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced” (100). The monster is simultaneously delighted and thrown into a pit of despair by these humans. He worships their values of goodness and kindness, but become wretched when he realizes that he will never be able to become one of them.

On the other side of this parallel (which may perhaps be the manifestation of the conflicting emotions described above), is the transformation of the monster due to his interactions with the de Laceys. The monster says: “I shall relate events, that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am” (106), when describing his relations with the family. Initially a benevolent and innocent creature, the monster learns of the ways of humans, and in particular what he perceives to be the extreme kindness of the de Laceys. When he is unable to gain their acceptance, his hopes are crushed and he becomes violent. Just as happiness and despair coincide in the monster, so do the potential for both kindness and violence, emotions manifested in actions.

The conflicts that rage throughout the monster in regards to the de Lacey family eventually cause the monster to snap, and the turning point of the novel to be reached. Prior to his interactions with the family, the monster is naive and benign, a mere nomad, simply satiating his instinctual desires. But following his studies and observances of the family, the monster learns of more than just instinct: he knows what it means to be spurned and rejected, and gives vent to his feelings of anguish, hatred, and vengeance. Without observing the de Laceys, there is the chance that the monster would have remained in the former state, leaving Frankenstein alone, and thus the novel would not be the novel that we have been studying all semester.

The turning point caused by the de Laceys could find its basis in many of the fields of literary criticism, but it has strong connections to ideas of the psychological. The monster’s passionate and varied surges of emotion – euphoria, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, hatred – respresent an unstable base that eventually cause him to snap and hence, the turning point. The de Lacey’s importance is that they create this unstable base, and then allow it to fall. Without them, the monster may not even have formed breakable emotions in the first place. The psychological automatically leads to Freud and his ideas of psychoanalysis: “from a psychoanalytic perspective, boys learn oedipally through identifying with the father and his threat of castration, the threat that originates concepts like honor and law” (Parker 135). This quote demonstrates the origination of higher concepts through the psychological processes of the psychoanalytic, and mirrors the monster’s learning of the higher concepts of emotion and human society through his observances and psychological processes in relation to the de Laceys. The de Laceys teach the monster everything that he knows about humanity and thus model the oedipal stage that the monster must go through in order to learn about these “higher concepts”. Once the monster has learned, the turning point is reached, demonstrating the de Lacey’s intense importance in the novel.

Trying to Exceed What Came Before

Over the course of the semester, I’ve become most interested in the usage of language and communication, both as tools to reach an ideal “I”, and as a way for different literature to communicate with each other. To me, the idea of language as both a tool and a barrier that we use to try to embody the symbolic is deeply fascinating, affecting us not only on a person-to-person scale, but on a cultural scale. There’s some pure form behind Frankenstein, out of the reach of the novel and the films. Words, Lacan reminds us, are just approximations. These works constantly speak to each other, trying to build towards that imago, that idealized pure form they want to be. Kenneth Branagh’s film tried to exceed the novel — and yet his Creature, designed to be sympathetic, came out as little more than a sadistic monster by the end of the movie. The lack of sympathy felt towards the Creature is due to it’s total lack of the novel’s psychodynamic linguistic elements.

Language, and particularly the Creature’s linguistic development, play a key role in the novel. His narration offers a window into his psyche, and it reveals his deep adoration for the De Lacey’s. It displays the nature of his development, showing how the Creature identified the De Lacey’s as his ideal “I”, rather than his own reflection. When the De Lacey’s betray him and he realizes his imago is a lie, he is  submerged in the Real. His violence becomes not just a response to society rejecting him, but a result. In the film, this adoration is made unclear. Branagh removed the narration but failed to compensate for the lost window. The De Lacey’s are never made into his imago, and the Creature’s turn from docile to hostile becomes far more one-dimensional than the complex motivations of the character in the novel.

The film, rather, tries to communicate and outdo the novel by heightening the intensity of the conclusion by including the composite female body. Diverting from the novel after following it (mostly) faithfully for it’s duration is a direct comment on the novel; the film, looking back through time seems to say “Hey! It’s the 20th century! We can give women a choice!” However, this choice falls flat. It essentializes women, instead: it combines two starkly different women–servant Justine and aristocratic Elizabeth–into one body in an attempt to unify all women. The message comes out muddled, and the film seems to say that all women want choice. The novel, however, resists such temptations. Such is the nature of aspiration and competition. While it can lead to profound success, it can also destroy the fine balance of an existing literary work. In the end, Kenneth Branagh’s film shows just how minute of a tight-rope Shelley walked when writing Frankenstein. The story she was trying to reach is within her grasp, so much so that I doubt anyone will ever use language to get closer.

The creature leaves the subaltern hierarchy

In the colonial perspective Spivak criticizes, the feminine subaltern is the voiceless other that is distinct from the colonizer, yet dependent on him. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein seems to support the colonial perspective at first glance, since Felix educates the foreigner Safie to lift her up from her culture’s role for her. One might suggest that their relationship actually weakens the distinct barrier between the colonizer and subaltern by having the colonizer mimic the subaltern: “He had chosen the work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of eastern authors,” (108). However, this mimicry is only for appearance. The clarifier “he said” is unnecessary since his dialogue is already known as the source of the creature’s knowledge. Instead, the clause brings attention to how both Safie and the creature are receiving their information through Felix, a formerly upper-class European male. The education is only “framed” in the perspective and not actually entrenched in it, a fact supported by the subjects covered. The education speaks of ancient Greece, Rome, and kings, but there is no material on the current Europe that surrounds the characters. The only current issue, the genocide of the Americans, is inherently detached by both geographic distance and the cultural distinction between Spanish and British. This lack of relevance keeps focus off of the relationship between subaltern and colonist, hiding it and protecting it from scrutiny.

Despite the attempt to reinforce the colonist-subaltern relationship, the monster presents a flaw. He manages to assimilate the experience of Safie, both informational and emotional like when he “wept with Safie,”  (109). Despite their synonymous experience, the wording implies the creature does not belong. Instead of simply saying he would not have been able to analyze the literature, the monster says  “I should not,” implying some sort of higher rules set the creature has accepted (108). With his male identity that is still other, the colonial perspective suggested by Spivak identifies him more with the Turkish culture that oppresses Safie and justifies Felix’s education. The creature knows the colonial perspective demands that he not break the simple picture of the colonizer teacher and the subaltern student, yet he defies the convention by associating himself, a male figure, with the sympathies given to the feminine subaltern. The colonial perspective becomes a post-colonial one because the subaltern is no longer confined to the role the colonizer gives it. While Safie remains silent, the monster is able to relate his tale to his creator and, in turn, to Walton, removing his status as a voiceless other.

Ambiguity in the Subaltern

In this passage, Felix is presented as the colonizer while the creature and Safie represent the colonized. This is because Felix projects his beliefs on Safie and the creature. Rather than just reading to Safie, the creature claims that he would not have understood the meaning of the book “Ruins of Empires” without Felix’s “minute explanations,” indicating that the meaning of the book is being filtered through Felix’s own opinions (Shelley 108). This also presents the creature as dependent on Felix in order to find meaning. Through Felix, the creature is able to gain “insight” that he would not be capable of without Felix (Shelley 108). The creature is dependent on Felix and he recognizes and acknowledges that dependence, presenting himself as the subaltern.

The creature’s understanding of history is clearly subjective, as he uses subjective adjectives such as “slothful Asiatics”  and virtuous romans (Shelley 108). This implies that he is not receiving an objective description of history. However, he is still using these adjectives, suggesting that he is digesting this objective viewpoint that is clearly pro-imperialist. He says that he learned of the “wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans,” finding virtue in war rather than being repulsed by the imperialistic violence of the Romans (Shelley 108). This indicates his initial acceptance of neocolonialism.

However, in the end the creature “wept with Safie,” implying his ability to sympathise with the “hapless fate” of the colonized. This suggests that the creature is able to relate to the colonized, presenting him as a symbol of the colonized and the subaltern. This detail presents the creature as a sympathiser of the colonized on multiple levels, as he is both relating to Safie, who’s character represents the entirety Sivak’s foreign colonized woman, and the colonized peoples of history, specifically the native Americans. In addition, this is important because it demonstrates the creature’s ability to form his own personal opinions on the world rather than simply digest entirely the information given to him by Felix. Thus, transformation is occurring in this passage. The creature’s sentiment by the end of this short passage is not identical to his feelings at the beginning.

It is also important to recognize that the creature learns of the Roman’s “subsequent degenerating-of the decline of that mighty empire,” (Shelley 108). This could influence the creature’s opinions regarding neocolonialism, as while the immediate result was success, it ended in degeneration. This is part of the creature’s turning point from acceptance of neocolonialism to repulsion.

This passage represents the tension felt by the creature caused by the differences in the information being fed to him by Felix and his own personal feelings. Safie and the creature do not immediately reject the information they are given as subjective, yet they are able in the end to recognize the negative fate of the colonized and to feel sadness because of this. They do not adopt Felix’s patriarchal view completely. Consequently, this tension highlights the problems with imperialism and the tensions that it causes, and represents a disruption of the binary, as the creature is not strictly for or against colonialism. Rather than strictly being “us vs. them,” meaning the colonizers vs. the colonized, the creature’s reaction is at times ambiguous, implying that he does not strictly fit into the role of the colonized or the colonizing. This ambiguity is further emphasized in the next paragraph, as the creature claims that the narration “inspired (him) with strange feelings,” (Shelley 109). He finds ambiguity in man himself, questioning why man was “at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?” (Shelley 109). The creature is internally conflicted by the lessons he learns from Felix and struggles to form his own opinion. However, this struggle represents his ability to stem outside of the strictly subaltern, making this a pivital passage that represents an important transition in the creature’s character.

Societal Outsiders

The last paragraph in page 108 of Frankenstein depicts the creature’s close observance of the de Lacey family, specifically concerning patriarch Felix’s warm treatment of an Arabian woman, who Felix referred to as “his sweet Arabian” (107). This woman, Safie, was an adopted daughter of the de Lacey family, and Felix takes the initiative of teaching her the native French language, which she struggled with as she “understood very little [and] conversed in broken accents” (108). He noted that while he “improved in speech, [he] also learned the science of letters, as it was taught to the stranger” (108), with one such “letter” being an actual book, Volney’s “Ruins of Empires.” This book enabled him to gain a strong amount of mastery of French, as he himself states that “he should not have understood the purport of this book, had not Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations” (108). Even though Spivak states that the book is an “attempt at an enlightened universal secular, rather than a Eurocentric Christian, history” (CP), its perspective is still tinged with Eurocentrism, with “plenty of incidental imperialist sentiment” (CP) natural of that era, like the rest of Frankenstein. Such Eurocentrism illustrates and defines the creature and Safie’s similar positions as outsiders in society through certain indicators such as their grief over the “original inhabitants” (109) of the Americas.

One of those indicators was why the book was chosen by Felix to instruct Safie in the first place. It is apparently “because [its] declamatory style was framed in imitation of the eastern authors” (108). Since the word “declamatory” means “bombastic,” Felix’s reasoning as to why chose this book is rooted in his preconceived notions of eastern peoples as a “bombastic” kind of people in speech and mannerisms. To Felix, they have a uniquely different way of expressing themselves and he felt that this book was demonstrative of such differences. In this sense, we already get the sense that the book will discuss eastern peoples and their empires in a different light than Europeans and their empires, and this is the case. The creature states that he “obtained a cursory knowledge of history, and a view of the several empires at present” (108). Well, this knowledge was definitely “cursory” and definitely offered a certain “view” of the world’s empires, based on the book’s simple and biting characterizations of non-Europeans like Asiatics being “slothful” (108) in comparison to its glowing description of the Grecians as possessing “stupendous genius and mental activity” (108) and the early Romans’ “wonderful virtue” (108). This strong distinction in qualities between Europeans and eastern peoples is an example of how even though, as previously mentioned, Volney set out to write the book in an enlightened, secular viewpoint, it still had classic indicators of a perspective and worldview shaped by traditional Eurocentric colonialist attitudes. Sweeping generalizations of an entire people as “slothful” makes that unmistakably clear. Spivak also made a point that ” nineteenth century British literature [saw] imperialism… as England’s social mission [and] a critical part of the cultural representation of England to be British” (CP), which can confirm the evident Eurocentrism in Volney’s words and the underlying Eurocentrism of Felix in his decision-making regarding the selection of Volney’s book to teach Safie.

The point where the creature and Safie weep over “the hapless fate” (109) of the Native Americans is the point where the similarities between the two shine stronger than ever. This is because both of them are outsiders in the society they currently inhabit, to a significant extent. The creature is an outsider because of his non-human and grotesque appearance, while Safie is an outsider because of her origin, culture and gender. As a non-European and easterner, she is of the same people who Volney, as a person trying to write in an enlightened and secular style, still characterized as slothful. In a society where Eurocentrism was so ingrained that it was still evident even with efforts to the contrary, of course Safie and people like her were not going to be fully accepted. Her gender factors in here as well because of women’s default second-class status in society, thus as a “foreign colonized (by Eurocentrism) woman” she is that much more disadvantaged as an outsider. The creature and Safie both feel empathy with the Native Americans because of how they were subjugated, overpowered and forcibly turned into second-class citizens in a land formerly theirs. The word “hapless” is very apt here because it specifically means “unfortunate,” which perfectly describes their fate as well as the fate of the creature (being homeless and unloved by anyone) and Safie (being an outsider as a non-European in a Eurocentric society). The creature definitely shares, to a fair degree, Safie’s unfortunate “foreign colonized woman” status, just as Safie shares the creature’s unfortunate societal perception of being an outsider and subhuman to many, as evidenced by the small yet significant term “slothful.”

Subjugated Symbolism and the Ideological Incongruity of the Subaltern

Through the use of Spivak’s methods of critical analysis, the Frankenstein passage on pages 108-109 may be more fully understood. Within the textual sample, Safie and the creature are constructed as parallel iterations of the feminine subaltern, which expose the instability of cultural and colonial discourse.

The passage begins immediately with the creation of a hierarchal relationship, describing a “book from which Felix instructed Safie.” There is a distinct sense of separateness and value, in which an ignorant eastern woman eagerly accepts the teachings of the learned western man. This concept of social striation is also translated to intellectual incongruity, as Safie and the creature “should not have understood the purport of this book, had not Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations.” Not only is one social position dominant over the other, but also one symbolic or linguistic discourse is championed. This is expressed by the fact that important knowledge is disseminated mostly through a style that appears foreign to those who receive it.

However, within the post-colonial world, the abjection of a colonized people is not always explicit or obvious. Felix “had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the eastern authors.” This statement re-emphasizes the idea of linguistic slavery. Not only are the colonized forced to adhere to the physical or economic forces of their captors; their very language is subjugated and co-opted. This expresses how lost a people may become, as colonial discourse may be masked within their native symbolism.

The exact contents of the book also have a unique character. “Through this work [the creature] obtained a cursory knowledge of history, “ a statement marked with a feeling of amorphous wholeness or generality, largely centered on the word “cursory.” What is described is not a listing of hard historical events, facts or figures; rather, its is a sort of summed narrative. This concept is maintained through a lesson including “a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave [the creature] an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth.” This sentence solidifies the thread previously presented. The lessons of the colonial discourse seek to marry each culture with a sense of essence, inherent meaning or soul, a feat accomplished through the use of highly variable, general, and emotional terms like “manners, governments, and religions.”

The passage proceeds to offer specific examples, from a notably western European perspective. Obvious appreciation for the “stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians,” the “wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans,” and the era of  “chivalry, Christianity and kings,” is contrasted with a banal disgust towards the “slothful asiatics.” Cultures are again granted an overall feeling of inherent essence.

Finally, the passage ends with the “discovery of the American hemisphere,” as the creature “wept with Safie over the hapless fate of the original inhabitants.” The concept of wholeness is expanded, and the true scope of the colonial discourse can be understood. It needs to have all elements of the colonial world, meaning that both the colonizer and the colonized are crucial components of the cultural discourse. The feminine subaltern here has accepted the colonial forms of linguistic subjugation and cultural essence. This means that the manifestations of the subaltern do not weep for the crime of the brutal slaughter of a culture. They weep because they identify with a subjugated people and unfortunate events, but they also maintain an idea of destiny in “hapless fate.” Even the colonized peoples willfully join in with the colonial discourse, gladly accepting their role within the whole of a macroscopic society.

The parallelism between the creature and Safie is used to expose the conflicting wholeness and incongruity of the colonial discourse. The subaltern is superficially identified as whole, within a specific debased native culture. This is idea is manifested in the bodily and personal wholeness of Safie. However, beneath the surface, the subaltern is swirling maelstrom of ideology, with native and foreign entities mixed. This concept is shown in the bodily and personal incongruity of the creature.

The Subaltern Speaks

The crux of Spivak’s argument is that customs, traditions, and events of a society are filtered through the perspective of those at the apex of that society. For example, the daily life in colonial America as we know it is filtered through a white, male, land-owning, Puritan perspective. However, we are losing out on enormous layers of subtext that Spivak describes as the “subaltern”: the perspectives of the poor/working class, women, slaves etc. The subtext can still be detected on a superficial level by understanding and contextualizing the filter itself. In this passage the filters are clearly illustrated and by highlighting these filters we can detect and superficially examine the subaltern within Frankenstein, the creature.

The first to examine is the multiple filters through which the monster and Safie perceive history. Working backwards, we see that the first filter is the book itself. It is written in a “declamatory style” that is “framed in imitation of eastern authors”. The style it is written in indicates that it is perhaps not a factually stringent text, but rather one driven by emotion and rhetoric. The text being framed in an eastern or foreign structure indicates a departure from the proper standard for examining history. Overall, the creature seems to criticize the text and indeed Felix’s reasons for choosing it, and in effect, we see the perspective of the creature, or the subaltern. The ultimate filter, however, is Felix or rather Felix’s perception of the Volney’s “Ruins of Empires”. The monster admits that he would not have understood the book and the history would be lost on him had not Felix “given very minute explanations”. The use of the word “minute” indicates that the explanations were in depth and very careful, as opposed to the bombastic nature of the actual text. The act of explaining itself directly influences and changes the intent of the original author’s since the information expressed by Volney is filtered through Felix’s ideals, and thus we would see the information “tainted” with Felix’s own sentiments. Thus, by understanding and contextualizing Felix’s own ideology, we can separate it from the creature and examine what’s left as the subaltern.

Firstly, the creature admits that he has a “cursory knowledge of history” and a “view” of governments, view here used comparable to that of a glimpse, but not an in-depth, intensive study of history. Yet in the next sentence, the creature claims that it gains insight into “manners, governments, and religions” of various nations, indicating a deeper and wider knowledge of history than previously expressed. Here, we have a fundamental inconsistency with the extent of the creature’s knowledge. This inconsistency fleshes itself out when the creature to makes sweeping generalizations of a society. By prefacing each society with a descriptive word or phrase, i.e., the “slothful” Asiatics or the “stupendous genius and mental activity” of the Grecians, or the “hapless” Native Americans, he ascribes qualities or flaws that are not physical, but rather indicative of character. For example, by describing the Asiatics as slothful, there is an innate anthropomorphization of a society, and by giving it innately human characteristics, it allows for ranking of societies, based on perceived flaws. This perspective is indicative of Felix’s ideology, and when we separate it, we are left with one perspective unique to Frankenstein: his sympathizing with the fate of the Native Americans. Since the word weeping indicates a deep emotional state brought on by personal tragedy, and since the tragedy occurs to someone else the creature has never met, it emphasizes the profound empathy the creature has for the inhabitants. This empathy reveals another characteristic of the creature, or the subaltern, that is not indicative of the overall perspective of the novel.

Powerful Omission

Although Shelley could have been just being modest in her omission of her home country in the description of the great empires of the world, I seriously doubt it. The British were some of the most famous and powerful colonizers the world has ever seen.In the 19th and 20th centuries especially it could be said that indeed “the sun never sets on the British Empire.”

However in this excerpt that chronicles the world’s greatest civilizations there is no mention of the mighty British Empire. Though the novel was written before the British reached their pinnacle of world power, the nation was still an extremely powerful one.  Through omission, Shelley has rendered the most powerful nation on earth voiceless. This is the same voicelessness that categorizes Spivak’s idea of the subaltern. Here Shelley has turned the binaries of weak/strong, feminine/masculine, colonized/colonizer, and turned it on its head. She has made the strong voiceless and therefore subaltern through her failure to mention the British Empire. This omission ultimately contributes an argument that runs throughout the novel and that is that ideology, no matter what is is is not a solution to any problems the world faces.

Another textual clue that points toward Shelley’s argument about ideology is the word “cursory.” This use of “cursory” to describe the creature’s knowledge of the world suggests a hasty and superficial learning experience. However the culpable party goes unspecified  Was it Felix’s teaching or the creatures attentiveness that failed in the situation? This ambiguity in the blameworthiness suggests that no matter where this spoon-fed knowledge comes from, whether the powerful instruct or the powerless observe, ultimately the whole ideological construction fails.