beauty and the beast

We had the film Frankenstein for our film and literature course. The brightest girl in the class, Jharna, could be quite eponymous while watching horror films. So, behind her specs, she had a jharna flowing from her eyes. She twitched her fingers, occasionally plucked on the neighbour’s sleeve, and watched with rapt attention – one with the film.

So we teased her. “You are an unfeeling brute, what will you understand,” she retorted. “Come, it’s just one of those regular old horror films. It doesn’t even match the horror of the technology driven horror films of now,” I said. Another friend commented that a 19th century novel with funny English of that time isn’t quite indulging. He would realize very soon what it is like to pull a scholar into such a discussion.

“Did you know that the novel by Mary Shelley on which this film is based is the beginning of the genre of horror?” she asked.
“Might be,” my friend said, “but a woman cannot conjure up stories like say Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”“You are a thorough patriarch,” she said, “Did you know that this novel is a statement against patriarchy by Mary Shelley?”
That we didn’t know, for all that the novel is about is a war between Frankenstein, the scientist, and the monster he has created out of dead people. It’s about only men, so how could it possibly be a statement against men?
“Mary Shelley’s father William Godwin was believer in Utopia. But Utopia, which is often considered idyllic is not quite idyllic. There’s quite a lot of politics to it. Godwin’s utopia proposed that there’ll be world full of men who will live happily with themselves. It shows the kind of hold men have had over academia to have ignored this fact for so long,” she said.
“The monster in Frankenstein is a manifestation of that,” she continued, “a man making a man. Against nature’s law. And see what happens to that world. Mary was her mother’s daughter. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first one to write about the vindication of the rights of women.”
“But why were you crying so much then if the movie is against patriarchy,” I asked.
“Because poor Frankenstein is hounded so badly by the monster,” she replied.