Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

My Frankenstein essay

chainsaw cat said:
Yeah, possibly...

But isn't it clearer and stronger to see the rage as against father/teacher/creator?

I seem to recall a lot of reading I did a few years ago (actually I remember the context as i type, it was 1994) to support MS as a conduit for early feminism, looking at the male taking over the role as creator of life. Doctors nudging midwives out, science interfering with gestation, conception, the wider theme of the industrial revolution with (men) creating right, left and centre.... women taken from home and cottage industry to feed the demand for hands in factories OOH! there's a good class bit. Synthesis of ideas, like it.

I read Jude the Obscure, ISTR, in parallel... and the Manifesto. It's all coming back to me now. And a very good scifi, 'Iron Dragons Daughter' which seemed appropriate at the time.

Anyway, The Monster ... He was raging agianst his creator quite specifically. How do you see Vicky Boy as representing the Overclass? Then or now? Wasn't he a distinct type and an individual? Just being rich doesn't cut it, surely?
Click to expand...

He clearly does. He is as I said the failed version of what his class was supposed to represent. I don't really need to explain why he was upper class do I? I mean Vicky was a university educated son of a landowner. How much more upper m/c can you get?
 
For a Marxist analysis wouldn't you need to engage with Marx or some post-Marxist thinker also? And the whole thing must be defended against the usual interpretation which situates the text within the romantic mindset. Hence a Marxist analysis might examine certain divergent strains within leftist thought, some of which cleave towards a post-enlightenment viewpoint and others much more towards a kind of utopian rejection of progress. Or perhaps you might engage with the idea of alienation- here in Frankenstein we see the labour of the doctor alienated in his creation- the monster- which escapes him. Is the monster perhaps alienated production itself, the commodity come to life, in all its monstrous inhuman horror?
 
DotCommunist said:
He clearly does. He is as I said the failed version of what his class was supposed to represent. I don't really need to explain why he was upper class do I? I mean Vicky was a university educated son of a landowner. How much more upper m/c can you get?
Click to expand...


Being of something doesn't mean you represent it. Not everything is a symbol. Perhaps MS just gave the character of the Creator a handy and easy-to-write set of attributes? Did it mean much in itself?
 
chainsaw cat said:
Being of something doesn't mean you represent it. Not everything is a symbol. Perhaps MS just gave the character of the Creator a handy and easy-to-write set of attributes? Did it mean much in itself?
Click to expand...

yes, yes it does. Regardless of whether she intended it as an easy set of attributes.
 
No, no it doesn't!
I'll change 'represent' to 'stand as a symbol for' which is not much of a change but...

do you represent the 20 -30 age range on U75?

A lot of people thought you were older. Me included, I had an image of a gay 40-something stick thin semi Goth with CCCP tattoos and a chainsmoking rollup habit.

Not you in at least one detail there.

But you are 'of' that group, aren't you?

I think MS was working to a different agenda than the one your essay demands her to be working to, and it's at least arguable that Vic was a cypher, not meant to stand for any group of people - maybe thee, in part, to stand for a societal change then happening, but not a group within the change(s)
 
chainsaw cat said:
No, no it doesn't!
I'll change 'represent' to 'stand as a symbol for' which is not much of a change but...

do you represent the 20 -30 age range on U75?

A lot of people thought you were older. Me included, I had an image of a gay 40-something stick thin semi Goth with CCCP tattoos and a chainsmoking rollup habit.

Not you in at least one detail there.

But you are 'of' that group, aren't you?

I think MS was working to a different agenda than the one your essay demands her to be working to, and it's at least arguable that Vic was a cypher, not meant to stand for any group of people - maybe fo work, in part, to stand for a societal change then happening, but not a group within the change(s)
Click to expand...

You realise that people of a certain time and socioeconomic background cannot be divorced from it in thier writings? bollox to bartez and his death of the author, the author is intimately tied to what they write and this opens the author to class analysis. standards.
 
chainsaw cat said:
No, no it doesn't!
I'll change 'represent' to 'stand as a symbol for' which is not much of a change but...

do you represent the 20 -30 age range on U75?

A lot of people thought you were older. Me included, I had an image of a gay 40-something stick thin semi Goth with CCCP tattoos and a chainsmoking rollup habit.

Not you in at least one detail there.

But you are 'of' that group, aren't you?

I think MS was working to a different agenda than the one your essay demands her to be working to, and it's at least arguable that Vic was a cypher, not meant to stand for any group of people - maybe thee, in part, to stand for a societal change then happening, but not a group within the change(s)
Click to expand...

ahahahahaha. Wetting me Y's
 
me, contemplating being a old goth:

n611440095_220937_664.jpg
 
rogue_lettuce said:
I love the bit where you have nothing to learn from any discipline outside marxism. Excellent intellectual rigour. ;)
Click to expand...

tis the only valid form of crit really. The rest of em are nice as intellectual exercises but they have no real relevance. Says the drunken Commie
 
DotCommunist said:
You realise that people of a certain time and socioeconomic background cannot be divorced from it in thier writings? bollox to bartez and his death of the author, the author is intimately tied to what they write and this opens the author to class analysis. standards.
Click to expand...

Of course they can. Who told you this dangerous lie? Hit them soon!
Some things are deathless and timeless. You just have to make allowances for detail.

Simple example; 1984 which has featured on here recently (p'raps because of 60th anniversary?)

Mr Orwell was a full on Establishment member (and therefore, by your reckoning, representative of same?) and appropriately educated for his time.

Can you tell me how he failed to be divorced from this in his writings? I don't want a list of how he kept to his background - tell me how he failed to leap from it in his analysis, description and prescription. And his actions.

Easy one to start with there I think.
 
chainsaw cat said:
Of course they can. Who told you this dangerous lie? Hit them soon!
Some things are deathless and timeless. You just have to make allowances for detail.

Simple example; 1984 which has featured on here recently (p'raps because of 60th anniversary?)

Mr Orwell was a full on Establishment member (and therefore, by your reckoning, representative of same?) and appropriately educated for his time.

Can you tell me how he failed to be divorced from this in his writings? I don't want a list of how he kept to his background - tell me how he failed to leap from it in his analysis, description and prescription. And his actions.

Easy one to start with there I think.
Click to expand...

oh dear:D

Eric Blair was a great champion of the working class while being entirely alienated from it. The famouse anecdote is about him moving house, using what he described as a 'pantechnicon' lol. The hip flask done the rounds and he dreaded his turn on the spittle ridden flask:D

His inability to divorce himself from his socioeconomic background is quite clearly seen in his description of the proles in 1984. To a greater extent you can se his class angst in 'Keep the Aspidistras Flying' where his 'mary-sue' agonises over middle-brow/high-brow fictions and reading habits.
 
DotCommunist said:
His inability to divorce himself from his socioeconomic background is quite clearly seen in his description of the proles in 1984.
Click to expand...

More than that, the whole book is about the concerns of the MIDDLE classes over their class privileges when faced with a state that is encroaching upon them (or has encroached upon them). Winston is not a prole, he's a well-to-do member of society, whose concerns are not for the proles, but for those of his class. He resents the fact that the members of the outer party have no privacy, live on rations, etc. IIRC he realises the proles actually have MORE freedom than he does, being under less scrutiny as they can do less damage to the party.
 
DotCommunist said:
oh dear:D

Eric Blair was a great champion of the working class while being entirely alienated from it. The famouse anecdote is about him moving house, using what he described as a 'pantechnicon' lol. The hip flask done the rounds and he dreaded his turn on the spittle ridden flask:D

His inability to divorce himself from his socioeconomic background is quite clearly seen in his description of the proles in 1984. To a greater extent you can se his class angst in 'Keep the Aspidistras Flying' where his 'mary-sue' agonises over middle-brow/high-brow fictions and reading habits.
Click to expand...

It's not angst, he's trying to work out what class means in practical terms for his time.

Read up a bit. He took a bullet in the throat for the class struggle, which in any honest analysis would cancel out a few lah-di-dah-isms.

The only reason you and I know about Blair's thoughts about the Working Class (ie they smell) is that he wrote about them in a spirit of self examination. Yes, he was trying to use himself as a 'representative' of his class , even though he was far from it. He tried to find out what the truth was both by direct personal experience and by thinking it through and talking it through.

Have you read 'A Clergymans Daughter'? He examines the very points you sneeringly allude to, and examines them well. Read it in the context of other 1930s fiction and see how it stands up.


Orwell was not really a champion of the working class, more a critical friend, or perhaps a champion of where the working class could be and what it could be. Ultimately, he wanted there to be no class. Good aspiration IMO
 
rogue_lettuce said:
More than that, the whole book is about the concerns of the MIDDLE classes over their class privileges when faced with a state that is encroaching upon them (or has encroached upon them). Winston is not a prole, he's a well-to-do member of society, whose concerns are not for the proles, but for those of his class. He resents the fact that the members of the outer party have no privacy, live on rations, etc. IIRC he realises the proles actually have MORE freedom than he does, being under less scrutiny as they can do less damage to the party.
Click to expand...

Did you read this important book for your GCSE and not since?

Any idea at all of the context?
 
chainsaw cat said:
It's not angst, he's trying to work out what class means in practical terms for his time.

Read up a bit. He took a bullet in the throat for the class struggle, which in any honest analysis would cancel out a few lah-di-dah-isms.

The only reason you and I know about Blair's thoughts about the Working Class (ie they smell) is that he wrote about them in a spirit of self examination. Yes, he was trying to use himself as a 'representative' of his class , even though he was far from it. He tried to find out what the truth was both by direct personal experience and by thinking it through and talking it through.

Have you read 'A Clergymans Daughter'? He examines the very points you sneeringly allude to, and examines them well. Read it in the context of other 1930s fiction and see how it stands up.


Orwell was not really a champion of the working class, more a critical friend, or perhaps a champion of where the working class could be and what it could be. Ultimately, he wanted there to be no class. Good aspiration IMO
Click to expand...

yes, yes and thrice yes. Lets not forget Homage to Catalonia in the discussion, nor wigan pier. Critical narrator is a more honest descriptor than critical friend imo. The man who struggled to pay his way at eton and enjoyed tea by the samovar just wasn't capable of through-the-eyes w/c perspective. That he did a damn good job trying, well that is without doubt.
 
chainsaw cat said:
Did you read this important book for your GCSE and not since?

Any idea at all of the context?
Click to expand...

Sadly we were not given such high calibre literature for our GCSE. I must have been either 12 or 13 when I read it. It would be unfair to suggest that Blair was upper/middle class "and that is all there is to say on the matter", but on the other hand, 1984 is hardly a book about the workers' struggle.

However, I don't think it's an indictment of Blair to say that he was unable to extricate himself from his class background. The very phrase "unable to" suggests he should have been trying to become working class, or something like that. On the contrary, I think that seeing economic prosperity as the determining or underlying factor in people's actions, beliefs, etc is just plain wrong - it's one of many factors, and people of all 'classes' (in the marxist sense) have something to contribute to any given political movement.

I have been muddling over how to overcome the unweildy intellectual tool that is 'class'... We need to be able to differentiate between two people who are on the same salary but who act completely differently and have completely different attitudes and belief systems. As this discussion has pointed out, some of the middle or upper classes would take a bullet for workers' rights, whereas others would prefer to be at the other end of the gun... Just talking in terms of class completely overlooks the effect that religion, culture and other variables have.
 
rogue_lettuce said:
Sadly we were not given such high calibre literature for our GCSE. I must have been either 12 or 13 when I read it. It would be unfair to suggest that Blair was upper/middle class "and that is all there is to say on the matter", but on the other hand, 1984 is hardly a book about the workers' struggle.

However, I don't think it's an indictment of Blair to say that he was unable to extricate himself from his class background. The very phrase "unable to" suggests he should have been trying to become working class, or something like that. On the contrary, I think that seeing economic prosperity as the determining or underlying factor in people's actions, beliefs, etc is just plain wrong - it's one of many factors, and people of all 'classes' (in the marxist sense) have something to contribute to any given political movement.

I have been muddling over how to overcome the unweildy intellectual tool that is 'class'... We need to be able to differentiate between two people who are on the same salary but who act completely differently and have completely different attitudes and belief systems. As this discussion has pointed out, some of the middle or upper classes would take a bullet for workers' rights, whereas others would prefer to be at the other end of the gun... Just talking in terms of class completely overlooks the effect that religion, culture and other variables have.
Click to expand...

Don't make the mistake of thinking class is not dependant on personal capital. It is, regardless of attitudes and habits, money dictates class.

In Orwells day it was not so obviously true.
 
OK. He didn't try to describe working class life through the eyes of the working class. He tried to live amongst them, and to an extent (in Paris) to live as a pauper, then describe it honestly and accurately to an (inevitabely) middle class readership, with the explicit aim of making them uncomfortable.

Congruent aims with w/c movements but not a w/c person.

Une bon oeuf tout circulaire, though. And he put his money, and his life, where his mouth was.


I'm saving Homage to Catalonia.
I know of it, of course, in great detail from many reviews, references and biographies. It's the last book of a great author that I've not read; you can only read a book for the first time once
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

P
Those were the days my friend...
Replies
4
Views
284
davesgcr
davesgcr
X
Recommend me some Scifi / Speculative Fiction / OK, maybe fantasy as well 2025 edition.
2
Replies
30
Views
1K
Serge Forward
Serge Forward
A380
New Bagpuss Film - Will Emily love it?
Replies
18
Views
429
Orang Utan
Orang Utan
Cloo
Showing kids more 'mature' TV/Films
Replies
27
Views
474
QueenOfGoths
QueenOfGoths
P
Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text C4 (EncroChat)
2
Replies
36
Views
968
Boris Sprinkler
Boris Sprinkler
Back
Top Bottom