Prompt: Allen Smith’s essay is explicitly concerned with the “terms of contemporaneous racial discourse” (564) that he holds should inform our reading of Victor but which have not factored in some of the novel’s most recent criticism. What have been the dominant terms of those other readings? How does Smith change or add to them to make them part of his “project.” What questions does his project raise for you? Be sure to incorporate specific passages from the essay when responding. What connections might you make between Allen’s work and Angela Davis’s talk?
Response: There are many aspects of the book that correlate with racial discourse in other works of literature. The topics Smith ties to the themes in Frankenstein to racial discourse range. He speaks about methods of oppressing/treating slaves or ‘lesser than’ beings being tied a history of West Indian and American slaves being denied access to education and language. One part of the essay that relates to this that stuck out to me was a quote from Henry Louis Gates’s Figures In Black: Words, Signs, and the ‘Racial’ Self.
“the correlation of freedom with literacy… became the central troupe of the slave narratives.” (p.554)
Earlier on page 553, Smith talks about how the Monster wasn’t just denied access to language and literacy by his master but was also never given a name as well. Smith tied this to the historical fact that slaves were often stripped of their past identities which included taking away their names. Some of them were even just named as the property of their master or named after the slave ship they were transported on. Because of this lack of identity as well as education, the slaves and the Monster are both kept less than their masters. So this book is ultimately a form of anti-slavery/anti-racism. Like Kari J Winter says, Frankenstein “attempts to give voice to those people in society who are traditionally removed from the centers of linguistic power” (p.548).
Another huge racial theme Smith talked about that jumped out to me was the different cultural definitions of different ethnicities. It’s not hard to see that the world has had a history of putting European/white people on a pedestal as the superior/purest human race there is. Smith looks to Paul Gilroy about this ideal who says, “Notions of the primitive and civilized…became fundamental cognitive and aesthetic markers in the processes which generated a constellation of subject positions in which Englishness… would finally give way to the dislocating dazzle of ‘whiteness'” (p.548). Smith brings up the fact that Shelly chose to have Victor create a Monster with “entirely the opposite of a pure line of decent” (p.552). Why else would Shelley choose to write Victor creating a Monster out of a variety of races and even species? I think Smith is trying to say that she did this to make the Monster a ‘less than’ object from the very beginning in order to go along with the British abolition of slavery in 1833.
I think it is interesting you brought up Smith’s comparison of the Creature to Slaves as neither were given names. This is something which I had not thought of previous to this reading, and it’s something that also strikes me as being an important part of human culture; having a name that is unique to you (though arguable there are very few names which are not shared by at least some others) gives you some aspect of an identity that makes you, in a sense, free. You become your own being, distinguishable not just in person but in writing and conversation when you are given a name. This lack of identity, and the effects of it are seen throughout the creature’s experiences in the novel as he struggles to accept himself as is. This is perhaps indicative of slaves and slavery, as the slave must only live through his master. I am curious as to what you think about the relationship the text has had with other means of analysis, i.e., feminism especially and how these meanings/interpretations relate.