| The dissertation deals with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, Frankenstein, Proserpine (one of her lesser known mythological dramas), and Lodore. I read her texts and writing style against the backdrop of the cotton and wool textile industry in the early part of the Nineteenth Century. I argue that Mary's writing style is a kind of weaving/unweaving, a revision of her contemporary world, particularly the material (female education essays, texts) and tools (embroidery, needlework, chastity) used to produce the "proper lady" or the imagined ideal middle- and upper-class woman. Conspicuously absent from most female educations (except Mary's) is learning Latin and Greek, the languages that many romantic poets---including Byron and P. B. Shelley---concluded were necessary to commune with the much heralded wisdom and mystery of "the antique," precipitating what is now referred to as "romantic hellenism.";Byron's and P. B. Shelley's interest in Latin and Greek texts raises the issue of the myths many romantic poets chose to retell (Prometheus was a favorite) and the impact these modern mythological adaptations had on poetic constructions of gender---"femininity," "the Feminine," the "figure of woman," "lovely muse,"---especially given that the themes of rape, abduction, death and silence of women are pervasive in Greek and Roman mythology. In contrast to Byron and P. B. Shelley, Mary develops her own brand of romantic hellenism which I argue is far more critical of constructions of gender in classical myths. Mary's romantic hellenism weaves/unweaves Greek/Latin myths in a way that politicizes the rapes, abductions, deaths and silences of women, while simultaneously politicizing the Nineteenth-Century "myth" of the proper lady and ideal woman. She creates a new, gynocentric mythology.;Throughout the dissertation, I use metaphors of weaving and textile work alongside classical myths to suggest a reading and writing style that I term "Pandora Aesthetics," which is a reading/writing style based on continuous acts of revision. A Pandora Aesthetics is like "diving into the wreck" as Adrienne Rich does, carrying a "book of myths...in which our names do not appear." Diving into the wreck to make names appear in a new book/text/textere of mythology. I like to think of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley as a modern Pandora who, in the midst of all these "Prometheuses," manages to transgress into the writing/publishing world and classical education, subverting and transforming the myths of her era, particularly myths told about women. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
