{"id":435,"date":"2017-10-29T23:58:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T03:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=435"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:17","slug":"blog-5-personal-reflection-images-of-race-in-19th-century-britain-frankenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/10\/29\/blog-5-personal-reflection-images-of-race-in-19th-century-britain-frankenstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog 5 Personal Reflection: Images of Race in 19th Century Britain & Frankenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having chosen to narrow the focus of my thesis to the ways that the concept of monstrosity in 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> century Gothic novels drew upon British imperialism, colonialism, and contemporary xenophobic fear, it has become necessary for me to develop a deeper understanding of Britain\u2019s history in order to engage in effective racial readings of my primary texts. For this reason, much of my research has been dedicated to discerning how to draw parallels between the fictional, monstrous figures of novels and the racial stereotypes that spurned fear and loathing from the British public during this time period. In trying to identify the ways in which monstrous characters reflect the societal notion of the threatening \u201cOther,\u201d therefore, I have utilized my key search terms, such as \u201cimperial gothic\u201d and \u201cmonstrosity\u201d in order to discover sources that will provide me with the information I am seeking. Choosing to tackle the monster in Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein <\/em>first due to its lack of more obvious connections to racism and imperialism, I stumbled upon H. L. Malchow\u2019s article \u201cFrankenstein\u2019s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain.\u201d This article has not only enhanced my understanding of the various overlaps that exist between British imperialism, racism, and Shelley\u2019s fiction, but, when read in tandem with Shelley\u2019s novel itself, has enabled me to have a new outlook on The Modern Prometheus <\/em>and its interaction with racism. <\/em><\/p>\n

I am particularly fond of Malchow\u2019s article because it sets up clear connections between British imperialism and the country\u2019s attitude towards those of other races and ethnicities in the 19th<\/sup> century. <\/em>Because British imperialism and Britain\u2019s construction\/conception of racial identity and racial hierarchy are fairly expansive topics, I have found it challenging to narrow down my historical research or pick out which works will be most valuable to my thesis. By reading Malchow\u2019s article, however, I have not only gained a more focused understanding of the \u201cNapolenic Era\u201d and Britain\u2019s century-long development of the concept of the \u201cOther,\u201d but have also been introduced to the events and literature that filled Mary Shelley\u2019s world with \u201cboth positive and negative representations of the black man\u2026[particularly] in Africa and the West Indies\u201d (99). Furthermore, this article also introduced me to other resources, such as Philip D. Curtin\u2019s The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 <\/em>and Douglas Lorimer\u2019s Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, <\/em>that center on the idea of savagery and monstrosity that shaped public opinion and societal conventions in Britain.<\/p>\n

In addition, I was also enticed by this article due to its overall structure and its primary topics of focus. In each section, Malchow emphasizes how the portrayal of Frankenstein\u2019s monster drew on either Britain\u2019s attitudes towards foreigners, the fears and hopes of abolition of slavery in the West Indies, components of the Enlightenment, or \u201cthe expansion of the power of British empire over non-white populations in Asia and Africa.\u201d This enables the article to draw straightforward connections between the text of Frankenstein <\/em>and the development of the racist, Eurocentric perspective (93). For example, Malchow notes that Frankenstein\u2019s hesitation to create a mate for his monster because he fears he will spawn a \u201crace of devils\u201d directly corresponds with the way in which Britain feared having \u201cblacks free from the discipline of the white master [in which they could] \u2026breed like animals unrestrained by decency or prudence\u201d (Shelley 210;Malchow 113). In this way, Malchow\u2019s article not only expanded my historical knowledge, but also gave me the opportunity to understand how to incorporate this knowledge into a textual analysis of Frankenstein. <\/em><\/p>\n

When I first read this article, I possessed a general knowledge of British imperialism, but had never dedicated a significant amount of time linking the country\u2019s imperialist actions to its impact on British culture and racial perceptions. While I admit that my first reading took a significant amount of time due to the fact that I had to research figures and topics with which I was not familiar, my subsequent readings allowed me to understand how Frankenstein\u2019s monster not only exists as a representation of the racial \u201cOther\u201d in the novel, but serves as embodiment of the racial stigmas associated specifically with blacks by the British public. Frankenstein\u2019s monster, like the stereotyped black of 19th<\/sup>-century Britain, is portrayed as \u201cwild and dangerous, unpredictable and childlike\u201d with a \u201cdark and sinister appearance\u201d and a lack of parental connections (Malchow 105, 102, 115). In this way, this article has enabled me to uncover how Frankenstein <\/em>portrays the inevitable inferiority and assumed villainy of non-whites in 19th<\/sup>-century Britain; Despite the fact that the monster begins with an innocent desire for knowledge, freedom, and acceptance, he, like blacks of this time period, is trapped in a role of subordination and exclusion due to Britain\u2019s patriarchal, color-prejudiced society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having chosen to narrow the focus of my thesis to the ways that the concept of monstrosity in 18th and 19th century Gothic novels drew upon British imperialism, colonialism, and contemporary xenophobic fear, it has become necessary for me to develop a deeper understanding of Britain\u2019s history in order to engage in effective racial readings … Continue reading Blog 5 Personal Reflection: Images of Race in 19th Century Britain & Frankenstein<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}