What can Frankenstein teach us about prejudice?

Join our Discord: / discord
Support us on Patreon: / books_ncats
Subscribe to The Ghoul Guides: ‪@TheGhoulGuides‬
There’s a reason Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is so enduringly influential, well-adapted, and well-studied, and it has to do with the novel's brilliant exposé of ‘the other’. Over 200 years have passed since its initial publication and we're still reading Shelley's words and using them to reflect on our very human tendency to scape-goat, and ‘other’, those who don’t fit in. Frankenstein raises a whole lot of questions about different forms of prejudice and the institutions and ideologies they support, from patriarchy to slavery - learn more by watching this video.
Content Warning: This video discusses racism, sexism, and sexual abuse
Photosensitive warning: At 2:45 and 9:25 there is a flash. Once the sound of thunder has gone, it's safe to look back.
Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats
Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_
mphotos.uk
Bibliography
'4 Types of Narrative Writing', www.masterclas...
Allgor, Catherine, 'Coverture: the Word You Probably Don't Know but Should', www.womenshist...
Burkhart, Emily, 'Lessons from Monster(s): Postcolonial Feminist Analysis of Frankenstein: The 1818 Text', Hohonu, vol. 18 (2020) 62-6 (62)
Clement Ball, John, 'Imperial Monstrosities: "Frankenstein," the West Indies, and V. S. Naipaul', Ariel, vol. 32 (2001) 31-58
Coffee, Alan M. S. J., 'Frankenstein and Slave Narrative: Race, Revulsion and Radical Revolution', Creolizing Frankenstein, ed. Michael Paradiso-Michau (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself., www.gutenberg....
Hale, Jessica, 'Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein', The UCI Undergraduate Research Journal, vol. 4 (2001) 11-20
Jenkins, Grant Matthew, '“A Vagabond and a Slave”: Frankenstein as (African-American) Slave Narrative', Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, vol. 2 (2018) 45-60 (46)
Mellor, Anne K., 'Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein', Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IUP: 1988)
Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal (Manchester: MUP, 2016)
Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press, 2024
Pon, Cynthia, '"Passages" in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein": Toward a Feminist Figure of Humanity?', Modern Language Studies, vol. 30 (2000) 33-50 (35)
Rammahi, Reyam Kareem, 'Can Safie Speak? Language and Representation of the Oriental Woman in Frankenstein', Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, vol. 18 (2022) 1-18
Rattansi, Ali, Racism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2007)
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, ed. Nick Groom (Oxford: OUP, 2019)
Sullivan, Zoreh T., 'Race, Gender, and Imperial Ideology in the Nineteenth Century', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 13 (1989) 19-32
Wester, Maisha, 'Et Tu, Victor? Interrogating the Master's Responsibility to-and Betrayal of-the Slave in Frankenstein', Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 38 (2020) 729-48