Barbara Johnston: My Monster/My Self

This 1982 modern criticism article made 5 points about autobiographies in connection to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.

1) Johnson points out that all three autobiographies (Walton's, Victor's, and the creature's) are attempts at persuasion and that their ability to persaude are based on the common characteristics between the teller and his audience.

2) She also makes the claim that Frankenstein, as a whole, is actually Shelley's own autobiography because there are some hints in the small introduction and contains many similarities to Shelley's personal life.

3) Johnson has states that Victor's rejection of the monster is actually an example of Shelley's own postpartum depression and mixed feelings towards motherhood. (This type of psychoanalytical insight was still very new at the time this article was written and only a few other critics had brought up this idea.)

4) Johnson also brings up the troubled relationship that Shelley had with her parents and that this might have possibly influenced the relationships between parent and children in her novel. (Shelley's mother died in childbirth and she had the pressure of both parents and her husband being famous writers.)

5) Johnson also believes that the because of the different contradictions to being female that were present in Shelley's life during the time she was writing this novel, she presented such a complicated autobiography.

Grendel: The Monster in the Closet

            People fear the unknown. It is a fact of life that humans are evolutionarily programmed to prepare ourselves for the worst possible situations. If we see movement in the trees, it is safer to assume that it will be an animate being that will cause us harm; because the alternative, being skeptical even as it crept closer would have meant death.

            This same mentality is similar to how young children will fear the monster in their closet or under their bed. They are convinced that the monster is something that can and will harm them, and there is absolutely nothing that they can do by themselves to ward it off. And in some ways, our imaginations can be more of a curse than a blessing. They will lie there in their beds and their fear will turn that monster into something much more intimidating than reality. This is also what happens to the Danes in the mead hall. They know for a fact that Grendel will come every night and kill the people who sleep there. However, because they do not know how to fight him off, Grendel becomes some invincible being in their minds and they lose all hope.

And like the young children who need their parents, the Danes need Beowulf. Parents will show their children that the monster is not the terrifying creature that they have made it out to be in their imaginations, and the role of the parents is akin to that which Beowulf fulfills for the Danes. Beowulf arrives with none of the fear that clouds the judgment of the Danes. He fights Grendel head on and in doing so, he proves Grendel’s mortality. With this, Beowulf efficiently breaks down the petrifying image of Grendel that the Danes had created and been so afraid of. And even though Beowulf does not kill Grendel, wounding this seemingly untouchable monster is enough to dispel the fear in the Danes’ minds. In essence, by ripping off Grendel’s arm, Beowulf also rips off his mask of immortality.

At the same time, the fact that that narrator never gives Grendel a concrete, physical form is another one of the reasons of why he is such a frightening monster even for the audience. Each person who reads it will create their own personal version of Grendel in their head. For example, if the narrator described Grendel as a giant man-eating spider, then the people who are afraid of spiders would be much more afraid than people who are not. But since the narrator simply describes Grendel as a monster, then each reader will automatically choose something that they each consider a horrifying monster, something that they are already afraid of.

            Overall, Grendel is an example of how humans naturally fear the unknown, something that is still present even now in modern society. But if we delve deeper in the human psyche, the fear of unknown stems mostly from humankind’s need for power and control. Therefore, we fear the unknown simply because it might be a threat to our authority. And for some people, loss of control is the equivalent to their safety and security being endangered.