Title of the Paper:
"Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Writing a Way out of Trauma"
Abstract: This paper looks not at the literary object Frankenstein, but rather at the process that led to its conception. Mary Shelley described the genesis of the story as follows:
Night waned upon this talk [of writing a ghost story] …When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual reverie (Shelley, 1818; 8-9).
This description is reminiscent of a waking dream and bears very strong resemblances to the free associative process that Freud would later define. Shelley later described the summer of its conception as when I first stepped out from childhood into life (Sunstein, 1991; 117).
Despite the difficulties of her early life, the notoriety of her involvement with Percy Shelley, and the recurring bouts of depression she suffered as a young mother and wife, Mary Shelley led a highly productive and balanced if controversial life. In this paper, I propose that Frankenstein and the free association nature of its conception allowed her to write “her way out of trauma.”
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