Mary
Shelley's
Frankenstein Gender Criticism and Queer Theory
Homework Questions: 382:
Explain: "Feminist and gender criticism are not polar
opposites
but, rather, exist along a continuum of attitudes" (382).
What distinctions, according to Murfin, can be made between
the different critical beliefs
found at the two ends of this continuum?
Explain: "One purpose of gender criticism is to
criticize gender
as we commonly conceive of it, to expose its insufficiency and
inadequacy
as a category" (382).
Explain: "Gender is not a property of bodies or
something originally
existent in human beings" (qtd. in Murfin 382).
Explain: "Gender is . . . a construct, an effect of
language,
culture, and its institutions" (382).
383:
What are the "essentialist" and "constructionist" views
(383)?
383-84:
What is the extreme constructionist position?
What, according to some "French-influenced Anglo-American
critics,"
is the "essential relationship between sexuality and
textuality" (384)?
385:
What does it mean to read or write like a man or like a
woman?
Explain: "Sexuality, commonly thought to be a natural
as well
as a private matter, is in fact completely constructed in
culture according
to the political aims of the society's dominant class" (Qtd.
in Murfin 385).
386:
Explain: "Sexuality is a continuum, not a fixed and
static set
of binary oppositions" (386).
What is "compulsory heterosexuality" (386).
387:
Why is film theory important to gender criticism?
388:
What, according to Murfin, is the significance of Foucault to
gender criticism and queer theory?
