『프랑켄슈타인』에 드러난 메리 셸리의 말하기 전략

Abstract

Mary Shelley's writing based on the relationship with her mother is correlated to the theories of Hlne Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Their primary concern is the female body, so they urge women to write about themselves, recovering their bodies buried as a dark continent, and therefore establish their subjecthood. To accomplish this, it is necessary for women to have affirmative relationships with their mothers. Mary Shelley's writing realizes this feminine writing in the narrative form as a concentric circle of Frankenstein. Basically, Frankenstein's narrative form is a series of letters sent to Mrs. Sarville by her brother Robert Walton. In these letters Victor Frankenstein's and the monster's stories are included. In addition, just as Victor's story contains Elizabeth's letters, monster's story does Safie's and Felix's correspondences. In this way Frankenstein is composed of letters within letters. The epistolary structure of Frankenstein shows a characteristic of feminine writing in that it supposes mutual and close relations between sender and receiver. Besides delivery of information, these letters function as the three narrators' autobiographies. Autobiography contains direct and actual experience of the writers from their real lives, and it can arouse reader's sympathy more easily than other literary genres, as is seen in the monster's autobiographical tale. Victor's and Walton's narrations also contain their personal histories which are persuasive as well. In short, with these three narrators' first­person narrations, Mary Shelley's writing is very close to speaking. Writing in the form of speaking is one of the characteristics of feminine writing, whose purpose is to make women's bodies heard and written. Like this speech-like writing is Mary Shelley's strategy and she succeeds in female writing of her own way.