Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Frankenstein
Malia & Alexa & Nicole
Cultural Criticism
Main Focuses
Areas of Interest
Tenets of Belief
High vs. Low Culture
High Culture: formal
Low Culture: casual
Cultural critics do not view a difference
between high and low culture; all culture is
equally important
Universities teach high culture
Cultural critics oppose the
Departments vs. Interdisciplinary Studies
Universities individually departmentalize studies
All works of art and literature are equally important; an advertisement and
an opera have equal importance when it comes to discovering and
studying their underlying ideas
Cultural context: Shelley used what was going on around her to not
only inspire her story but also to add more depth and symbolism
Page 518
The kinship between these ambitious schemes is highlighted in Frankensteins polar frame,
when Victor, stepping in to support his Arctic dopplegangers quest, insists that human
beings can triumph over polar ice. Animated by the feverish fire that glimmers in his
eyes (182), Victor persuades the sailors that these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills,
which will vanish before the resolutions of man (181). Claiming that the crew once dreamed
of being the benefactors of [their] species, Victor mocks their desire to retreat back into
the ostensive domestic security of their warm firesides, declaring that to retreat from ice
would be to turn their backs on the foe. Ultimately, he insists that the human race can and
will overcome the empire of ice, declaring that [t]his ice is not made of such stuff as your
hearts might be it is mutable, it cannot withstand you, if you say that is shall not (183).
Victors language here is strongly reminiscent of crusades against frost, both in his
assurance that ice will vanish before the will of men-- an image that evokes melting rather
than bypassed icebergs-- and its anti-domestic exhortation that European men look beyond
their domestic duties to engage in a battle with ice that will benefit humanity.