Frankenstein + Orlando Essay Plans

Question 1

Essay plan for gender:

Answer 1

Silencing of women, legally, by men and in the narrative:
- “(1) she was dead … (2) that she was a woman which amounts to much the same thing.”
- trial of Justine
Narrative: in F used as plot devices, 3 narrators, all men , female creature never given an opportunity to narrate the female experience
- By men: all the female deaths in frankey stem from the wrongdoings of a man, prostitute: “all they desire, we were about to say when the gentleman took the words right out of our mouths. Women have no desires”

Gender and Society:
Victor vs creature, M Orlando vs F Orlando
Expectations of women: “women must be obedient, chaste, scented and exquisitely apparelled by nature”, “doile” “submit with grace” “softness” “constraint” - semantic field of animals - extended metaphor of Archduchess Harriet as a hare, “fragile creature”, “favourite animal”
- creature states that a wife would be “equal”,
- F Orlando thinks it is ridiculous that women should control themselves “lest a sailor may fall from the mast-head”

The farce of cisnormativity

• Bennett and Royle - narrative - “distortions themselves ca only be conceived against a background of linear chronological sequence” - we have inherent cisnormativity we need to overcome but not ignore
• running motif of clothes defining gender - irony of the superficial physical defining being and identify
• nature “the deer and the dogs are far better judges of both identity and character than we are”
• transcience of gender identity and norms in Frankenstein - frankey adopting role of woman as creator - clereval and father as carers IN FRANKEY IT IS THE MEN WHO HAVE THE LUXURY OF TRANSENDING GENDER NORMS
• the creature has masculinity imposed upon him - he is built strong and must use this to survive

Conclusion: misogyny and cisnormativity are fucked up social constructs

Question 2

Essay Plan for narrative and style

Answer 2

Narrative and genre

• F genre defining O genre defying
• F provides us with tropes and style of a new genre - gothic and sci-fi
• Frankey also coheres with the structure of a tragedy - curiosity = Victor’s hamartia
• Orlando = modernism “a desire to break with established forms and subjects in literature” - Norton Anthology of English Literature
• Orlando defies both genre norms (it’s called a biography) but also logical ones - lives through centuries

Interaction between reader and narrator

• narrators are very involved in the events of both texts
• biographer negotiates with reader “are we to blame Orlando?”
• right from the start we cannot trust the biographer (it’s not a biography) - ironty that he/she constantly attempts to enforce legitimacy
• Woolf plays on the interaction between reader and narrator through the abundance of literary figures within the text itself —> disillusionment
• Frankey - complexity in the narrative, the ‘story’ progresses through (at stages) 3 narrators/ three different ‘discourses’ - Jonathan Culler
• as suggested by Bennett and Royle - the narrative is pieced together just as the creature is!!!

Bennett and Royle’s fifth proposition
“stories always have something to say about stories themselves”
- creature learns about the world through reading + the DeLaceys
- intertwines with the 3rd proposition “the telling of a story is always bound up with power, authority, property or domination” - only the wealthy, educated can write the books - “governing or massacaring their species”
Orlando:n - self-conscious narrative style, even proposing narrative concepts (deciding to imagine Orlando’s life in Constantinople) - constant references to the canon

Question 3

Essay Plan for identity

Answer 3

external influences on identity
Transience of identity in both
- victor adopts the role of creator
- monster builds his own identity as the novel progresses
- cisnormativity and gender reated identity
- running motif of clothes defining gender - irony of the superficial physical defining being and identify
- transcience of gender identity and norms in Frankenstein - frankey adopting role of woman as creator - clereval and father as carers IN FRANKEY IT IS THE MEN WHO HAVE THE LUXURY OF TRANSENDING GENDER NORMS

The superhuman/mutant
- both exceed the human “goes through and beyond the natural” - B + R
“The monster is excluded abjected, not because it is entirely other, because it is at least in part identical with that by which is was excluded … the human”
- they both search for someone like themselves - Orlando finds Shelmerdine who also transcends gender
- creature is not given his wife

the obscurity of identity to others
Orlando’s percieved identity is always changing
- clumsy –> extremely seductive
man –> woman (always changing)

FINISH THIS

Question 4

What are the arguments for narrative essay?

Answer 4

para 1: Shelly establishes the forms and subjects that Woolf escapes

para 2: both text’s narrative styles serve the purpose of not only relaying the events of the text to the reader but, to some extent, interject the reader into the narrative itself.

para 3: I argue that the use of narrative in both texts acts in accordance with Bennett and Royle’s propositions on narrative and thus serve as a social commentary