O gótico feminino em Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley.

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze features of the female gothic in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818), by the English writer Mary Shelley (1797-1851). This novel deals with a scientist that creates a living creature with parts of dead human beings, and debates fears of a society during the Industrial Revolution, such as, the fear of the Other (male, female, racial etc). This aesthetic gained notoriety for portraying crimes against helpless women, and the author debates this in an uncommon way and perspective. For such an enterprise, the methodology used for this research was characterized by a literature review, primarily using the assumptions of Botting (1996), Burgess (2003), Hogle (2006), Gilbert and Gubbar (1984), Husillos (2014), Leite (2009), Monteiro (2017) and Tillotson (1983) to ground the Female Gothic. Then, the surveys of Giassoni (1998), Florescu (1998) and Lecercle (1991) were fundamental to the discussions about the limits of science found in the violation of natural laws and the artificial “postpartum depression” of Victor Frankenstein. In this sense, the duality between the Creator and the Creature is referred to through the conjectures of Lellis (2021) and Rank (2011) before the Doppelgänger tradition that probes the Promethean narrative. This research will show that Shelly adapted the gothic aesthetic to deal with emale fears.