Yet , nothing is sexually knowledgeable; the initial one or two take its spotlessness towards grave
The defilement of being born, inevitable outcome of sexual contact: here we encounter in its fullness an archaic symbolism that cannot be assimilated either to social norms or to the <349>assumptions of “liberal feminism.” The best a civilized order can do, as Shelley so visibly demonstrates, is exclude it, keep it at bay, repress all evidence of the sexual origin of impurity. To the extent that Frankenstein recapitulates the etiological drama of Paradise Lost, as Gilbert and Gubar suggest so persuasively, it does so to reveal the way Milton mitigates the paradox of impure birth. 17 Death in his epic has origins quite apart from those of life. Adam ents now soil’d and stain’d” [9.1076]; he may regret that all his future progeny “Is propagated curse” []. 18 But the cause of that impurity and curse is not sexual contact but moral infidelity. Milton sublimates the symbolism of defilement by situating it in a moral context that at least ostensibly antedates and explains it. The “spotless innocence” (4. 318) of Adam and Eve precedes their fall; as Milton takes pains to insist, so does their sexual intimacy. And although Eve, through her moral lapse, brings death into the world, its taint is only provisional, as she herself discovers: “I who first brought Death on all, am grac’t / The source of life” (11. 168-69). Life at its highest for Milton is not a strictly bodily phenomenon, which means that a material defilement can be morally purged. Witness Raphael’s parting admonition to our fallen parents, “add only / Deeds to thy knowledge answerable” (12. 581-82). For Milton the Fall occasions an impure sexuality, not vice versa.
The life and innocent women that frequently serve as Shelley’s female top are untainted because of the intimate contact
Shelley recapitulates his story not merely, as Gilbert and Gubar suggest, to expose its patriarchal assumptions, but also to recover the archaic symbolism it sublimates. Her new Adam, the wretched monster, resists assimilation to those social norms that descend from a moral interpretation of defilement. 19 More importantly, he asserts, in his very hideousness, the fatal materiality of all life, its mortal intimacy with death. Shelley’s Adam is thus more man than Milton’s, a creature of human, not divine, procreation. An impure birth is the given paradox of this existence, a tragic paradox that, in Shelley’s view, social norms and the moralities that found them arise to repress. Perhaps now we are in a position to understand, partly anyway, why the female characters of Frankenstein are such an insipid lot. With a few exceptions, they fall into two categories: virgins, who are all living angels, and mothers, who are all dead. The “selfless, boring nurturers and victims” [Johnson 7] that so irritate feminist critics pos- <350>sess another quality as well: sexual innocence. Women like Caroline Beaufort who have lost that innocence through bearing and bringing up children are noticeable in this narrative for their absence. We need to account for this striking distinction. Why should Shelley divide the feminine into living maidens and the dead matriarchs?
The fresh new symbolic converse out of defilement try significant purity — in the intimate conditions, virginity. Age, Justine, Sophie, and you may Agatha all play the ethereal part of Finest Woman. Pupils of impure beginning, they have not yet escort radar, revived that impurity. Their most useful standing rests on the sexual innocence. Ricoeur reminds united states one an enthusiastic archaic symbolization means the brand new virgin given that the newest undefiled: “virginity and you can spotlessness was just like the closely sure together with her given that sexuality and you may contamination” (29). Shelley’s best people continue to be biologically immaculate. They are insipid as they are not even emails anyway, but signs regarding a lifetime yet uncontaminated of the materiality.