Hamlet And Frankenstein Comparison

The Imaginary Mother’s the Substitute of and the Tragic Ending: A Lacanian Reading of

Hamlet and Frankenstein Hamlet and Frankenstein are two different literature genres. One is William Shakespeare’s classic drama and another is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s science fiction. However, in the two works the two protagonists Hamlet and Frankenstein all want to combine with their mothers and never separate with their mothers. However, under the law of father, their desire cannot be expressed or satisfied. They have to bear the suppression of outside and oppress their unconscious desire for their mothers. John Storey claimed that “Lacan believes that the union with the mother was a moment of plenitude. When people get separated from our mother,

On the other hand, he struggles with female relationships so he hardly believes any women and pronounces a curse on all women, which also includes Ophelia. He uses rude words to insult Ophelia and repeatedly tells the innocent Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery” (Ham. 3.1. 88). French mentioned that the nunnery in this sentence had two meanings. Firstly, it means that Ophelia should “enter a convent to escape corruption” (79). Secondly, the “nunnery” in Shakespeare’s indicated a brothel so it implies Ophelia should go to the “brothel” (79), which seems to express that Hamlet no longer believes the women are pure, chaste, and virtuous. Hamlet’s ruthless language hurts the heart of Ophelia. Finally, Ophelia throws herself into the river to drown and uses death to finish the slander. After that Hamlet lost a person who deeply loves

Seemingly, through a specified way, Elizabeth becomes the substitute of Victor’s imaginary mother. However, in the inner of Victor, Elizabeth never replaces with his mother. Even though Victor has a dream about holding Elizabeth, he just treats Elizabeth as his dead mother’s body. He seemly tries to repossess the maternal body. “I slept indeed, but I was disturbed of the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms…” (Shelly 46). Elizabeth seemly equates with Victor’s dead mother but she is also Victor’s sister. Kotze said that “the true desire underlying Victor’s almost incestuous relationship with his cousin-sister-bride is exposed as the forbidden desire for the imaginary mother” (62). In this relationship, Elizabeth is just a victim of Victor’s “lack”. She never has the real emotion of love and killed by Victor’s