The Path To Self-Identity In Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) is a famous novelist of the Romantic period. As the only child of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, both of whom are famous political writers, she became another well-known political writer— Percy Bysshe Shelley's second wife at her 16 years old. Under her parents and her husband's great influence, this girl experienced much development both on her thoughts and writing. During her lifetime, she wrote 17 works in all, but only Frankenstein still remains on the shelf till now. It is considered one of the best Gothic novels as well as the first science fiction in the modern sense.This essay centers around this work mainly from two perspectives: Frankenstein's search for identity including his self-identity. Here "Frankenstein" is the name of the scientist as well as the monster created by him. This paper adopts cultural analysis to inquire into Frankenstein's self-identity and its signification to the contemporary society.Identity means human's position in the world. Identity is one's position relative to that of others, or one's standing;it also means the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known. An individual's identity is the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which this person is recognizable as a member of a group. One's status and significance can be identified with the order and culture of his group. Based on the study of the text and the relative social background, this paper, in the attempt to analyze Frankenstein and his monster's path to self-identity, discusses on Mary Shelley's crisis on anthropocentrism and her worry on the scientism, and the caution brought to the contemporary society by Frankenstein and the profound meanings hidden beneath this role.This paper is divided into three main parts. In Part One there is an introduction on the history and cultural background of Mary Shelley. Firstly, it is an analysis of the relationship between the rise of gothic novel and the Enlighten Movement, a discussion of Mary Shelley's opinion on rationalism and scientism. And it generalizes Mary Shelly's reflection on certain dominant patterns of ideology in western culture. This part also looks into Mary Shelley's ideas on Romanticism and Godwin's optimistic thinking.In Part Two, in the light of human's identity, this paper offers a detailed analysis of the two protagonists, Frankenstein and his monster, pointing out that the people like Frankenstein, from Prometheus to Faust, are always trying to test human being's limits, in which way rebuild human's identity. Second, this paper, taking language and its power offered by human history and culture into consideration, analyzes how language transforms and reconstitutes its users. Monster, at least in this text, wants to be a mortal but finally still helplessly accepts its identity as a monster, and his path to self-identify is narrow and hard. In sum, this paper points out that the core of kinds of conflicts in this novel is anthropocentrism.In Part Three, this paper focuses on Mary Shelley's motive in this writing and her worry and even her crisis on both anthropocentrism and scientism, as well as the signification brought by Frankenstein and the whole novel to the contemporary society.