Ellen Moers and literary criticism

Mary Shelley & Ellen Moers

Creation and Abortion: The Creator's Dilemma in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" as analyzed by Ellen Moers

In the essay, "Female Gothic: the Monster's Mother," author Ellen Moers provided a new perspective in interpreting Mary Shelley's Gothic cum science fiction novel, "Frankenstein." In the essay, she discussed the parallelisms between the Mary Shelley and the character of Victor Frankenstein, which she both considered as "creators." One parallelism that stands out in the lives of Shelley and Frankenstein is their being both creators and destructors of human life. The 'creator's dilemma' is when Shelley and Frankenstein experienced giving "birth" to life while also being responsible for its death upon its birth.

This argument presented by Moers is given central focus in this paper. Using her argument that the novel "Frankenstein" presented the "creator's dilemma," where creators Shelley and Frankenstein both became creators and destructors of human life. This is demonstrated in the novel between the phases wherein Frankenstein created and later banished the Creature that he considered a monstrosity. In this paper, the analysis and discussion reflects how Moers depicted the creator's dilemma through examples in the novel "Frankenstein." This paper posits that the creator's dilemma is illustrated in a two-fold manner: the first phase reflecting the role of Shelley and Frankenstein as creators of human life, while the second phase highlighted their journey towards unintentional (for Shelley) and intentional (Frankenstein) destruction of the lives they have created.

In discussing the uniqueness of "Frankenstein," Moers stated that it "brought a new sophistication to literary terror ... For "Frankenstein" is a birth myth, I am convinced, by the fact that she was herself a mother" (216). This statement referred to Shelley as being not only an author, but a mother as well. The novel as a birth myth meant that not only Shelley became a creator by producing a new kind of 'literary terror,' but she was also a creator of human life as a woman. This parallelism in her life is reflected in the author's recollection of her life, wherein she had given birth to nine children, wherein some had the unfortunate fate of dying even before they reached their early months. This parallelism was utilized in Moers' essay in order to elucidate how the process of the Creature's creation was in fact a vital moment directly linked with Shelley's life.

Another important interpretation that the essay had in linking the process of creation in Shelley's life was the birth of science, which was also reproduced through her depiction of the power of science to make possible the birth myth. However, Moers gave an entirely different meaning to creation through the aid of scientific experimentation: "Birth is a hideous thing in "Frankenstein," even before there is a monster. For Frankenstein's procedure, once he has determined to create new life, is to frequent the vaults ... And study the human corpse in all its loathsome stages of decay and decomposition" (220). The study and creation of human life from death made the birth myth in "Frankenstein" a literary terror unto itself. Thus, Shelley gave birth to a new literary genre where Gothic elements were combined with principles about the science and experimentation.

The birth myth -- that is, the creation of human life -- was highlighted in the novel when Frankenstein tried to, like Shelley, become the creator. In becoming the creator, he sought to transgress the distinction defining life from death: "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through ... A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." Frankenstein's path in bringing life from the death is similar to Shelley's creation of a new literary genre arising from Gothic elements and the discipline of science. Thus, like Shelley, Frankenstein becomes the father to the Creature that was given life from his scientific experimentation.

The second phase involved the unintentional and intentional destruction of human life by Shelley and Frankenstein, respectively. In the process towards the destruction, or more aptly, abortion of human life, Moers said that despite Shelley's giving birth to numerous children, she had been incapable of caring and rearing all them. The author especially cited the death of her firstborn, a daughter that did not survive, and had died barely months after her birth. Having experienced creation and destruction -- the birth and death of a child -- Shelley empathized with Frankenstein, whose character as creator and destroyer to the Creature was the novelist's way of expressing her frustration at having the ability to create and unintentionally destroy a human's life.

Indeed, the parallelism between the life of Shelley and Frankenstein as destroyers ('abortionists') of human life was best illustrated in the following passage from Moers' essay:

... Mary Shelley's book is most interesting, most powerful, and most feminine ... In the motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences ... "Frankenstein" seems to be distinctly a woman's mythmaking on the subject of birth precisely because its emphasis is not upon what precedes birth, not upon birth itself, but upon what follows birth: the trauma of the afterbirth.