1. The Culture of Sensibility and
Frankenstein
By: Prakruti Bhatt
2. The Culture Of Sensibility
• A book by G. J Barker- Benfield
• Full Title: The Culture of Sensibility- Sex and
Society in Eighteenth Century Britain
• Published in 1992
• Helps to analyze the conceptions or ideas
regarding the female psyche in the eighteenth
century
• A new perspective towards Mary Shelley and
Jane Austen’s writings
3. Sensibility
• Meaning- a receptivity of the senses
• Meaning in the eighteenth century- An acute and well
developed consciousness invested with moral and
spiritual values
• Was at the heart of the culture of middle class women
• The essence of this culture, Barker-Benfield reveals,
‘was its articulation of women's consciousness in a
world being transformed by the rise of consumerism
that preceded the industrial revolution.’
• The struggle for self definition (the roots of feminism)
• Example- Mary Wollstonecraft's “Vindication of the
Rights of Men”
4. Frankenstein
• The text reflecting the development of culture
of sensibility
• Mary Shelly- a woman writing about scientific
discovery and social responsibility.
• Elizabeth’s character
• “Invention it must be humbly admitted, does
not consist in creating out of void, but out of
chaos.”
5. So What?
• How far is the text, the articulation of a
woman’s consciousness?
• The role of sensibility in the gender politics of
the time
• What if Frankenstein was written by a male
writer?
