A Woman Alone and Writing: Anti-Ideology and Artistic Irony in Writings of Mary Shelley

TL;DRAbstract

This study focuses upon the letters, journals and selected fiction of Mary Shelley and reveals that Shelley engages in the processes of anti-ideology and artistic irony to help her explore gender identity. To show her consistent use of these processes, I juxtapose excerpts from her letters and journals with excerpts from her fiction. The fiction selections are narrowed to three: Frankenstein, Mathilda and The Last Man. In addition, I examine her writing and her use of anti-ideology and artistic irony relative to the influences of her significant others: her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, her father William Godwin and her husband Percy Shelley. In doing so, I also consider the influences of Mary Wollstonecraft's and William Godwin's ideologies. I find that using the processes of anti-ideology to question gender construction and identity does not ultimately work for Shelley since her creative imagination cannot effectively escape the influence of masculine constructions about gender. My stu

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