How, according to Smith, does class figure into
the conception of separate spheres?
Explain: "The novel shows that the private virtues
inculcated
in the home by the domestic affections cannot arm men against
the public
sphere unless they emulate these feminine and domestic
qualities"
(361).
363:
Explain: "For Mary Shelley to name herself as Frankenstein's
author,
then, might be to endanger her status as honorary man, to risk
having her 'masculine understanding' impugned as
'femeninely expressed'"
(363).
364:
Explain the connection between Mary Shelley and the
"oppressively feminine
women" of Frankenstein.
In what ways is Alphonse a "feminine patriarch" (364)?
365:
What is the "myth of perfectability" (365)?
366:
Describe Dussinger's conception of the Frankenstein family as
"a paradigm
of the social contract based on economic terms" (qtd. in Smith
366).
367:
Explain the difference described on this page between
Alphonse and Victor
as fathers.
Explain: "Frankenstein, I believe, does show the
importance
of parental nurture, but it does not thereby absolve the child
of agency
in and responsibility for, what we might call self-creation or
self-nurture"
(367).
368:
Explain: "As Victor's murderous "spirit" the monster
reveals the
dark side of the Frankenstein family's oppressive domesticity"
(368).
369:
Explain: "The domestic enclave of affective relations turns
out to be
not an alternative to but a mirror of the public sphere of
economic relations"
(369).
Explain: "Women function not in their own right but rather
as signs
of and conduits for men's relations with other men" (369).
371:
Explain: "To trace Victor's move from alchemy to
chemistry is
thus to trace the tensions and conflicts of contemporary
gendered science"
(371).
371-72:
What is a paradigm shift?
372:
How, according to Smith, is "Victor's move
from alchemy to chemistry
via the electricians . . . a paradigm shift in miniature"
(372)?
Explain: "As the monster enacts the insurrection of
subjugated sciences,
he also enacts Victor's rebellion against domesticity" (372).
374:
Explain: "The pertinent distinction is not between false
science (alchemy
or natural magic) and true science (chemistry) but between a
discredited
form of science and a newly dominant scientific paradigm"
(374).
377:
Explain: "The workshop itself--not a domestic space but not
quite an
institutional setting--indicates Victor's difficulties in
escaping the
domestic sphere so as to create a masculine professional
identity" (377).
