Frankenstein and a Critique of Imperialism: by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

• Creates an image of a “Third World”

• Feminism: Frankenstein competes against woman as the maker of children and maker of a new Eve.
• Father is unable to produce a daughter- roles of males and females have been switched? Man tries to overrule woman in her roles of society
• Henry Clerval (associated with practical reason in the novel) states he will visit India for entrepreneurial rather than missionary reasons. Shows European interest for the east and their desire for business and not moral purposes.
• Ariel Safie: the Christianized “Arabian.” Father is victim of bad Christian religious prejudice- therefore is wily and ungrateful. Mother is good Christian who is morally refined. Everyone is victim of human cruelty, even foreigners. Imperialism encourages this cruelty, stereotyping, and racism.
• Frankenstein tries to tame monster by humanizing him and bringing him within circuit of Law. “This is the being whom I accuse and for whose seizure and punishment I call upon you to exert your whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate.” By this time, we have grown to pity the monster for his hardships. We know that the monster has properties which will not be contained by proper measures (the authorities / man). When we hear that the law / man will be suppressing the monster again from this freedom, the reader is angered that man continues his cruelty against the monster.