Romantic Imagination and Maternal Guilt in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Buckley examines what happens to the analogy between imaginative creativity and reproductive fecundity in a Romantic reworking of maternal imagination such as Frankenstein. Shelley literalises the reproductive metaphor in the novel and self consciously exposes a set of assumptions about women, imagination, and pregnancy. Shelley dissects medical view that full responsibility for the pregnancy should devolve onto the mother; the resulting cultural pressure placed upon expectant mothers; and the Romantic tendency to merge reproductive and literary creativity. Shelley critiques the scapegoat mentality produced by medico cultural blame; by emphasising Victor Frankenstein's guilt regarding the creation of his monstrous child to address the way that Romantic writers eschewed the problematic elements of maternal imagination such as guilt, shame and fear, while appropriating its valuable creative and transformative qualities.