Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Bakhtin distinguished the literary form of the novel as distinct from other genres because of its rendering of the dynamic present, not in a separate and unitary literary language, but in the competing and often cosmic discord of actual and multiple voices, thus making contact with contemporary reality in all its openendedness (Bender et.al., p. x). Bakhtin's definition of the novel is important because it serves to illuminate the reason why Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has come to be regarded as connecting important, but widely disparate, elements of nineteenth century culture in Victorian England (Fisch et.al., p. 186). With many apparently conflicting themes such as the domestic ideology of the bourgeoisie family and parenting on the one hand, with fear of pregnancy, childbirth and forbidden emotions ranging from the desire to play God and incest on the other, Shelley's Frankenstein is often seen as a complex mosaic, which...
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