Date of Award
Spring 4-17-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Piers Brown
Abstract
Frankenstein is often read as a familial text: written collaboratively by two young lovers, representing a daughter’s profound grief of Mary Wollstonecraft’s early death or the weight of William Godwin’s estrangement. This thesis situates Frankenstein in two other traditions: the market, in which the book was published, produced, and mediated by its publisher Lackington & Co., and the public, in which it was mediated by readers and periodical reviewers. The overlap between these domestic, market, and public domains, I argue, offers us an opportunity to remove Mary from what are typically oppressive and subordinating associations. It shows how the domestic sphere is stressed by complex nexuses of mediation. My first chapter moves through the process of publishing Frankenstein, contextualizing how each rejection and its eventual acceptance by Lackington & Co. positioned the text in the literary field of 1817. Chapter two explores how this anonymity led the novel’s reception to be framed by Frankenstein's Dedication to William Godwin. Chapter three positions Frankenstein within its publisher’s list: arguing that it emerged from a distinct public context. This all culminates in a both simple and deeply complicated argument: that the image of Mary as a domestic heroine was constructed, like her iconic ‘creature,’ via both the material book and the publishing and social nexuses around it. Accepting this new contextualization of Mary as an author created—like Percy and Wordsworth and Byron and Austen—by the public sphere allows us to view her work and her image as professional, authorial identities. I aim to distance Frankenstein from its captivating biography and move it towards a thoughtful position in this Romantic literary economy.
Recommended Citation
Boyd, Sophia, "The Medium is the Monster: Frankenstein’s Economic, Public, and Domestic Lives" (2026). Honors Theses. 1010.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/honorstheses/1010
Rights Statement
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