The Author as Creator in Frankenstein Essay -- Frankenstein essays

The reservoir as Creator in Frankenstein Mary Shelleys Frankenstein tidy sum be subscribe to as an allegory for the creative act of authorship. Victor Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus seeks to attain the association of the Gods, to enter the sphere of the creator rather than the created. Like the Author, too, he apes the eventual(prenominal) creative act he transgresses in trying to move into the maidenlike arena of childbirth. Myths of divine conception are themselves part of the historical cultivate that seeks to de-throne the feminine this is the history of Art, itself at first denied to women as an outlet of self-expression. It is a process recorded in Art itself, in stories like that of Prometheus. Prometheus in earlier myths stole heighten from the Gods (analogous to the author at his craft). Later he was credited not just as Mans benefactor but as his creator. Man creates God through myth so as to move over a power to ordain towards. At this point text, ana logy, and reality routine upon each other. As Victor moves into the female space of the womb, an act of creation aped by the Gods in mythology and religion, Mary Shelley as author moves into the male soil of art, aping the creative power of the Gods. Reading Frankenstein as an analogy for Art can be more fruitful if done within the framework of Oscar Wildes essay, The decomposition of Lying, in which the author argues that the artist creates the world and not just imitates it this will conclude this essay. At the meal between mortals and the Gods at Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into judge the bones over the choicest entrails. Man was punished by the denial of fire Prometheus again defied the Gods in stealing it. As punishment, he was chained to a cl... ...he mutation of the story to film, Frankenstein has often mistakenly been used to signify the monster. This transition itself reflects the process of progression and substitution. As in the case of the non-existent deerst alker that Conan-Doyle never wrote about, film representations have come to denote the essence, supposedly, of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Works Cited March, Jenny. Prometheus. The Cassell Dictionary of real Mythology. London Cassell, 1998. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein Or the Modern Prometheus. 1818. Ed. James Reiger. sugar U of Chicago P, 1982. Waxman, Barbara Fry. The Tragedy of the Promethean Overreacher as Woman. Papers on Language and Literature 23 1 (1987) 14-26. Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. Oscar Wilde. Ed. Isobel Murray. The Oxford Authors. Oxford OUP, 1989.