Identifying Unhomeliness and Mimicry: A Postcolonial Analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Abstract

  The study is an attempt to explore unhomeliness, hybridity, and mimicry in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (first published in 1818) from the theoretical perspective of postcolonial theory. It also investigates the psychological, social, and cultural implications of the monster's existence as an outcast physically and biologically through the theoretical lens of unhomeliness, otherness, and mimicry of Homi K. Bhabha's. It further examines the monster's displacement, ostracization, and lack of recognition and acceptance in human society. It also focuses on the hybridity, alterity, difference, and acceptance of the monsters in human society and its cultural norms. The study also focuses on the mimicry, oddity, and eccentricity of the monster in the given temporal and spatial norms of the given society. The monster’s mimicry is an attempt to assimilate into the social, physical, biological, and cultural norms of society, but in vain due to its ugly and subhuman form. The study has its great significance in terms of modern scientific innovation and experiments like artificial intelligence and digital humanism. The key lines from the novel will be chosen for the analysis and findings of the study. Also, the selected text would be evaluated and analyzed through the theoretical lens of postcolonial theory and cultural studies. The study would authenticate that homelessness, hybridity, and mimicry would be considered privileged and advantageous sites to contest and challenge the Euro-centric universal norms.