Date of Award
2019
Publisher
North Dakota State University
Document Type
Master's Paper
Degree Awarded
Master of Arts (MA)
Program
English
Department
English
College
Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Faculty Advisor
Andrianova, Anastassiya
Description
The scholarship currently surrounding Mary Shelley’s The Last Man is scarce in comparison to the amount of scholarship with her more well-known text Frankenstein. One of the popular trends of Frankenstein scholarship centers on analyzing anxieties of motherhood in the text. This paper utilizes this scholarship to examine a set of analogous anxieties present in The Last Man, set against an apocalyptic future where there is no next generation. This paper uses a combination of feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and new historicism to examine the anxieties surrounding motherhood and children in The Last Man. I begin by analyzing the figures of the mother and the child in the novel before analyzing the different anxieties present both in literal motherhood and then in metaphorical reproduction through technology, literature, and companionship in animals. Mary Shelley’s work, and not only Frankenstein, deserves acknowledgement and study.
Recommended Citation
Banasik, Jasmine Del, "“What Shall Befall Him or His Children”: The Figure and Anxiety of the Child in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man" (2019). English. 62.
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/english/62
Rights
NDSU Policy 190.6.2
Rights Link
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf
Handle Identifier
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/29728