| Since the great works Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), especially the famous critical essay The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel (George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher Levine, 1982) as a milestone in Frankenstein criticism, which shows that scholars have seen her candidly as a human being, was published, commentators have been considering Mary Shelley (1797-1851) as an important novelist by analyzing her novels with kinds of opinions.As a newly discovered old archetype, androgyny is widely accepted as an awareness of the presence in every person of male and female elements, which is said to be a state of balanced inner harmony of the animus and anima, but not hermaphroditism, i.e. existence with the physical characteristics of both sexes. Nevertheless, because of the limitation of its day, androgyny in the traditional Christian thinking has been regarded as a harmonious state of the male's self-sufficiency by androgenesis as well as the alienation from the female, and a motive of masculine to go back to the paradise before Eve born from Adam.Besides, Prometheus as an archetype active in the sphere of literature is becoming a more complicated image of multiformity, through the transformation by the theorists and artists of each period. There are lists of Promethean images, such as Prometheus as the fire-stealer, the trickster, the symbol of intelligence, the rebel, the creator or benefactor of human beings, and the criminal for the disaster of human beings, etc. What's more, there is a vast tension between these images, which can coexist within one archetype including his image as androgyny and the member of patriarchal system, both of which are one branch of the Creation, and the myth of the Creation is tightly connected with procreation, from the microcosmic perspective. Therefore if the two archetypes androgyny, Prometheus and motherhood are syncretized, there must be vast academic value for the research of Mary's Frankenstein.Therefore, my research leads me to her fiction's ties to androgyny, Prometheus, and motherhood. The archetypes including Prometheus in Frankenstein illustrate thatthe theme of birth-giving embodies Mary Shelley's feminist idea. Through dialectic-negation, Mary expresses her understanding of androgyny, and by refuting masculine androgynous Utopia and widening the signification of mother, she leads the readers to the reconsideration of the reliability of dichotomy in the Western philosophy, which reveals the exceedingness on motherhood and androgyny.This thesis consists of three parts.Part 1 presents the literature review of the researches and perspectives on this novel by other scholars in the past. Here and throughout I minimize the previous research through other approaches but primarily the previous research applying archetypal theory of Prometheus and androgyny.Part 2 describes the basic theory relative to the thesis. First, it lists first the main aspects on the traditional theory on androgyny as the background. By comparing the masculine idea related to androgyny, the features of androgyny as a plea for the female is attained. Then this chapter continues to describe the recent scientific research on androgyny, that is, psychological androgyny, especially the research by Sara Ruddick on the redefinition of mother. Then Mary's response to the research is generally set out.Part 3 first exhibits and analyzes the images of Prometheus as an androgyne, which is necessary to analyze the subtitle " the Modern Prometheus". First of all, the general description of Prometheus story as a background is given, then the image transformation of Prometheus by the previous philosophers and authors. Mary transposes and transforms the Prometheus images before her, and uses them in the molding of Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus. Particularly, the material for Mary's Frankenstein can mirror a lot of the characteristics of the male persons around her, especially Percy Shelley. Therefore in this section I use biography as supplement because...
|
PDF Full Text Request