Review of Related Studies

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

There are some related studies that could help this study that are taken from many perspectives. Kas Haye s in his article ―Similarities between Author and Creation in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein ‖ points out that there is relation between Mary Shelley‘s past life and the character of Victor Frankenstein. Both of them suffer from the bitter past experience in their life when they are still in average years. It is about the lack of affection of the absence of a mother. Mary Shelley loses her mother when she is in her growing phase, and at that time, she still needs the presence of a mother. So, she writes Frankenstein to show her feeling: In her famous novel about a man and his creation, much of Godwins soon to be Shelley unconscious transformation through adolescence is visible. Notably she infuses the creature with some of her own adolescent issues. In some ways, Frankenstein is a glorified journal entry; allowing Shelley to write about some of her personal issues as she navigated that difficult line between being Godwin the adolescent and Shelley the adult. Through the creature, she discusses the loss of her mother, the estrangement of her father and the generally dysfunctional life of her biological family. Shelleys parents were well-known writers of their day: Mary Wollstonecraft considered a radical feminist writer Smith 4 and William Godwin, the father of philosophical anarchism Kreis. Wollstonecraft died eleven days after giving birth and although Shelley did not have her mothers presence as a child Hayes, 2008. From the event happening in the past, the writer unconsciously defines the story line of Frankenstein as the story of her life. In Freudian work, there is terminology called dream work. That is the process by which real events or desires are transformed into dream images. Thus the characters, motivation, and events are represented in literary way and reconstructing the abstract ideas or feeling into concrete images. In Barry‘s book, it is stated that: Dreams are just like literature; do not usually make explicit statements. Both tend to communicate obliquely or indirectly, avoiding direct or open statement and representing meanings through concrete embodiments of time, place, or person Barry, 2002: 98. From the quotation above we can see that the writer‘s past event may affect the storyline of a literature she made, based on what she felt at that time. So, when writing the literature, the idea of character Frankenstein and his creature may represent the people in real life. Anthony F. Badalamenti in his journal says that Shelley‘s novel served as a waking expression of unconscious feeling of past event in relation of her husband, Percy Shelley. Badalamenti relates the past story of Mary Shelley to the novel Frankenstein and it results that there are similar names, stories and places that are rewritten in the novel. Decoding is the chief tool used in this attempt to divine Mary Shelleys motives. It is a means of finding the unconscious meanings hidden by substitution, a defense used to consciously express an emotionally charged but unconscious issue that would be unbearable were its real meaning open to conscious view. The idea of substitution, or encoding, is more current and more exact. Encoding brings some relief of a cathartic nature but rarely resolves under lying issues. It is a familiar of poets, authors and the gifted in general, most of whom tend to use it unconsciously, just as Mary Shelley did. Mary Shelleys story was a substitute expression of deeply troubling feelings of hurt arising from Percy Shelleys many violations of their relationship. Unable to deal with them consciously and being very young, indeed a teenager, at the time she wrote the story, she unconsciously encoded her pain and her rage in her novel. Thus, the monster is here decoded as what Percy did to the love between himself and Mary Badalamenti, 2006: 420. Anthony researched the history of Mary Shelley‘s past event to the novel and found out some similarities. For example, in the novel, the opening scene is in the North Pole, and Percy, Shelley‘s husband at that time, wished to see the poles unfrozen. The main character in the novel is Victor Frankenstein; Percy Shelley‘s favorite pseudonym in early life was Victor. Victor Frankenstein‘s favorite sister is named Elizabeth; Percy Shelley‘s favorite sister was named Elizabeth, and both were family favorites. So, the point is he sought the history of Mary Shelley to make the research why she created the novel Frankenstein. Dadik Prasetya Aribowo in his undergraduate thesis ―The Personality Disorders of The Characters as The Result of The Dissatisfaction of Life in Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein‖ concludes that Frankenstein‘s curiosity of something makes him feel dissatisfied, and in this case are the curiosity of knowledge and making a creature that he wants but instead becomes a monstrous thing: Frankenstein‘s thirst of knowledge takes place in the first part when he comes to the feeling of dissatisfaction. He wants to improve himself hardly to obtain more understanding. Frankenstein wants to grab everything in his hands. What Frankenstein actually does is a reflection toward what happen to us. It is the nature of man that the more he gets the more he wants. Therefore, this kind of waiting is endless and can never be satisfied Dadik, 2003: 61. From the two related studies, both of them take the same object and that is about the mental disorder of the character, but in this research, the writer wants to acknowledge more about the relation between the dynamic of ego, id and superego in psychoanalysis that happen to Victor Frankenstein. The first two studies focuses on the connection of the author and the main character, Frankenstein, in creating this literary work. The story life of Mary Shelley is almost similar to the story of Frankenstein, they both lose their mother. She had experienced the loss of a child that might be represented in the novel. They are also close to the family mostly to the father because the mother is dead. The similarities of the author and Frankenstein could be assumed as it is the reason why Shelley creates the novel, they share a same agony. There are also names of characters, places, also trace of events which are almost connected to the storyline of the novel she created. There is no exact truth if the characters or the personalities of the characters in the novel were made up randomly, or as she like, but there might be connection between her story life and the storyline. She put her feelings towards the novel and unconsciously delivered the messages into it. So, it could be said that the dynamic personality of Victor Frankenstein is the effect from the dynamic occurrences that happened in the past which involve Mary Shelley‘s nearby into the story. The second study only focuses on the personality disorders that are seen on Frankenstein and the creature. It explains the over desire of Frankenstein to build the creature, and for the creature itself, the writer explains more to his unclear reason why he is being created. This is actually almost the same as the focus of my research, but the difference is he is only stating the sequence of the story but not dividing it to which category should the personality be placed.

B. Review of Related Theories