Session III: Weaving Realities: Life, Death, War and Magic

Christine Grossman (Hamline University, Minneapolis MN): "Victor Frankenstein: A Case Study in Hybridity"

We know Mary Shelley thought of Victor Frankenstein as both modern and Promethean; the book is called Franekenstein: or: The Modern Prometheus. From his experiments, we know that Victor is a scientist. So, in some intimate way, in this novel Scientist, Modern, and Promethean are significantly linked and together make up the main character. I think Victor seeks to be a Modern. I also think his problems grow from the Modern Condition, as Mary Shelley understood it. The snag is that Victor’s strong scientific influences are medieval and the hierarchies set up throughout the novel echo a medieval worldview. Linking these details is important when reading this text; why are these things connected and what light can be shed by taking them together? Looking at Victor’s epochal situatedness is an important critical act; how is he a Modern, as opposed to a Medieval? Why is it important that this Scientist is a Modern? Why is this Scientist-Modern Promethean? Theorist Thomas Kuhn argues that scientific revolutions are a key component of the modern scientific world. Kuhn might say that Victor is a failed revolutionary; he pursues what Kuhn calls “normal” science as espoused by his medieval inspirations. Bruno LaTour treats meanings of the intersection between Scientist and Modern; to apply LaTour’s definition of “modern” will help situate Victor in terms of his epoch alignment. Frankenstein’s problems are symptoms of tensions between medievalism and modernity. He can be read as an archetype of the modern man, trying to escape his medievalism.

Connie Tchir (Jamestown College, Jamestown ND): "Recovering the Subplot: Frankly Re-Mythologizing Franco in Pan’s Labyrinth"

Given the difficult layers of deceptive exaggeration and metaphor in the film Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro, the confused reception of the English speaking audience should have been expected. The clearest indication that North American English audiences were suffering from the impact of intentionality were the awards that they bestowed upon the adult “fairy tale” for art, cinematography, and make up. In short, all the visuals eclipsed the actual storyline that was replete with a negative re-mythification of Franco and his minions. While audiences and critics were willing to applaud the artistry of the effects, few acknowledged the layered metaphors that drew deeply into the anti-fascist perspective of del Toro that gave said effects their true impact. Even the critics who were aware of the historical references were unable to translate the subplot for North American culture.

This paper breaks down the plethora of monsters and misfits that populate Pan’s Labyrinth as the mirror image of the main plot. This contextual misunderstanding extends to the very title that was meant to guide public comprehension with the idea of the fauna as opposed to the god Pan. From beginning to end, perception of Pan’s Labyrinth has been a cultural misfit itself, whether one considers marketing, labeling or criticism, in all senses of the latter. This paper will demystify the re-mythification and reveal the true monsters and misfits behind the tale.

Zubair Amir (Benedictine University, Lisle IL): “The Mind Prefers… Conjecture to History”: Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta, Gossip, and the Romance of Social Mobility"

This paper examines how Thomas Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) challenges traditional assumptions about the sociocultural negligibility of gossip, instead affirming how its inherently transgressive generic features render it a powerful site for articulating and renegotiating social relations. Emerging into the public realm from the intimacies of private conversation, gossip proves uniquely responsive to the paradoxical figure of the social climber, who, in order to cross class boundaries, must withstand public discussion while endeavoring to preserve secrets of family history. Where narratives of self and class seem inadequate, gossip goes to work, uncovering and circulating fuller—and hence socially damaging—versions of the social climber’s story. “[T]he woman has made a great talk about herself,” one of Ethelberta’s suitors complains, “and I am quite weary of people asking of her condition” (Hardy 62). But Hardy’s novel complicates this picture, emphasizing how these same conversational energies unexpectedly facilitate social mobility. Distinct from other acts of narration in being motivated more by pleasure than by truth, gossip generates narratives that establish the social climber as a source of fascination: the “best” stories—the best pieces of gossip—about outsiders need not always be the ones that would correctly identify and exclude them. Hardy thus shows how such discourse situates itself between fact and invention, potentially forestalling movement toward (social) disclosure. Indeed, gossip ends up widening the range of possibilities for what the “truth” of Ethelberta’s background and class status might be, unexpectedly creating for the novel’s heroine complex stories of class belonging.


Monica Sabahi (California State University, Fullerton CA): "Alice the Benevolent: Imperial Trespass in Wonderland"

Throughout the nineteenth century many writers struggle with the topic of imperialism and its affect on the British social hierarchy and psyche. The establishment of British control and the total suppression of the native people was a topic of discussion on many middle class citizens’ minds. These ideas were not solely subject to adult newspapers and novels, but also of the texts given to children; the earliest of these being chapbooks.

There has been little discussion on the topic of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a representation of imperialism. From the on set of the story Alice forces her presence in a landscape where none of the inhabitants care to encourage social exchange. Alice continually interjects her own ideals of etiquette and social order on a pre-established society. Carroll’s work has previously been examined as feminist, psychoanalytical and historical but few studies have been done to show the importance of the text as an example of imperial trespass and British colonial power.

In my paper I examine Carroll’s text as an example of British Imperialism and the constructs of social ideals and imposition on those of lower “natural” birth rights. The text accompanied by original illustrations can become suggestive of a Wonderland that Alice imposes her British ideals upon. Alice represents the conqueror and educator of the “other”, or native. The difference in Wonderland is that the subjects refuse to be controlled and it is at these moments that Alice begins to lose her control and lashes out with manners. Through the nonsensical scenes the reader is given a road map in which to view Alice’s subtle establishment of power through each interaction. Alice serves as a children’s texts that supports the Victorian desire of empire and the expansion of Britain as a world force.