frakenstein

            
             The Ghost of A Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
             The article was written by Vanessa Dickerson who is the professor of English at DePauw University where she teaches Victorian, and African literature. She has written a book Ghosts in the Noontide: Women writers and the Supernatural, co-edited another volume recovering the black females, published several essays on Victorian and African American writers. Dickerson also received her P.H.D at Princeton University. .
             This article is dealing with how Mary Shelley wrote about how females are viewed in life and in the novel according to their actions. It starts with how Shelley came to write the book, she was told to write a ghost story. So she studied and researched on the topic talking to people who had personal experiences with the topic. She wanted to explore what it was meant by being essentially silent or the ghost of a self. .
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             Later in a terror or dream drove her back through her world of realties all in one night. She then decided she must write using "hideous .
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             progeny" and frighten the reader as much as the dream had frightened her. .
             The hideous progeny in the novel dealt with monsters and women. People point out that Shelley implies that women are listeners. The article goes on to entail characters in the book relating them to the thoughts of ms. Dickerson who states The Women are more tellingly the Progenitors of ghosts who will haunt the supernatural tales of later women writers. .
             Last the article tells of how women are keepers and loving, but in the novel all the women failed at both then died. Such as Justine, Elizabeth, and the mother who died at the beginning. What I got out of the article was Ms Dickerson pointed out that women are seen and not heard in the book for a reason, Ideally they are ghosts themselves in reality. She believed this would reach out to women writers in the future, Stating that Frankenstein wasn't you average ghost story.