Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor

America and the Long 19th Century Series

by Elizabeth Young

For all the scholarship devoted to Mary Shelley's English novel "Frankenstein," there has been surprisingly little attention paid to its role in American culture, and virtually none to its racial resonances in the United States. In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans.

Black Frankenstein stories, Young argues, effect four kinds of racial critique: they humanize the slave; they explain, if not justify, black violence; they condemn the slaveowner; and they expose the instability of white power. The black Frankenstein's monster has served as a powerful metaphor for reinforcing racial hierarchy--and as an even more powerful metaphor for shaping anti-racist critique. Illuminating the power of parody and reappropriation, Black Frankenstein tells the story of a metaphor that continues to matter to literature, culture, aesthetics, and politics.

Genres: Race, Nonfiction, Victor Frankenstein, Theory, 19th Century, History

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2008

About the author

Elizabeth Young is Professor of English and Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College. She teaches courses in women writers, feminist theory, American literature, and film.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Annika · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned of this book through Scott Poole's book Monsters in America, which cited it extensively. Even though literary studies are pretty far out of my wheelhouse, I decided to give it a try. It definitely wasn't for me, but then I'm a history person, not a literary analysis person.

I found the first chapter on nineteenth-century American interpretations of Frankenstein very interesting. Young convincingly shows that the original book is infused with questions of race, gender, and class and that American readers of the book, both pro-slavery and abolitionists, read the book as being about race and slavery. I was also fascinated by her brief tangent about how early theatrical productions of Frankenstein created the "myth" that we know better than the original story today--ex: the comedic lab assistant, the monster being unable to speak.

The rest of the book was...a little much for me. Young interprets many works that use generic monster metaphors or violent attacks on an "other" as being intentional references to Frankenstein, but I wasn't convinced that most of these authors were referencing Frankenstein. Her discussion of parody and metaphor in Frankenstein and elsewhere really lost me--it felt like she was trying to use a lot of unnecessary jargon just to seem clever. But then again, this isn't at all my field. To those who speak the same theoretical language as Young, it might be a brilliant and insightful book.

[Ruthie Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting! I love how Shelley's Frankenstein has been analyzed in so many ways, and I enjoy seeing different ideas develop and grow from her amazing book. Young applies the idea of monster/creator to slaves/slaveowners in America. The big question when monster/creator is applied to any group is who is the monstor?

[Mills College Library]

810.93529 Y714 2008