Frankenstein and Imperialism

In Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, Spivac states that, “The discourse of imperialism surfaces in a curiously powerful way in Shelley’s novel...” (847). Shelley’s novel, of course, being Frankenstein. Yes, we have gone over Frankenstein quite a lot, but from reading this essay I was given new incite to Frankenstein’s demolition of the female monster. Before when reading this part of the novel, I had compared it to rape or violence. Spivac takes a different turn. He writes that, “(Victor Frankenstein gifted with his laboratory- the womb of theoretical reason) cannot produce a daughter...Frankenstein cannot produce a “daughter” because “she might have become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate...” (848). Saying that a daughter cannot be produced because she will turn out worse than the son, opens the floodgates for different kinds of criticism. According to Spivac, “This particular narrative strand also launches a thoroughgoing critique of the eighteenth-century European discourses on the origin of society through (Western Christian) man” (848). This new comparison broadened my understanding of different possible ways one can read just one portion of Shelley’s novel.