Reading Frankenstein Through Four Critical Lenses
Introduction
Literary criticism is not simply the process of finding the meaning of a literary text. It is also a way of asking how a text represents society, power, identity, nature, class, gender, and cultural values. The same literary work can therefore produce very different interpretations when it is approached through different critical theories. Marxist Criticism may draw attention to class, economic structures, ideology, and material conditions; Feminist/Gender Criticism may examine patriarchy, gender roles, and the representation of women; Ecocriticism may investigate the relationship between human beings and the natural world; and Queer Criticism may question heteronormativity, fixed identities, and conventional ideas of gender and sexuality.
For this activity, I have selected Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus as the literary text. First published in 1818, the novel tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, whose scientific ambition leads him to create a living being and then abandon it. The novel moves between different narrators, including Robert Walton, Victor, and the Creature, and explores ambition, knowledge, responsibility, isolation, creation, and social rejection.
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The purpose of this activity is not simply to define four theories. Instead, it is to understand what a critic actually does while reading a literary text. Generative AI is used here as a literary-theory tutor, while the final stage involves human verification and reflection.
Understanding What the Four Critics Actually Do
The primary reference for this section is Dilip Barad's On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism. The source explains that these approaches investigate socioeconomic structures, patriarchy and gender representation, human–nature relationships, environmental ethics, heteronormativity, and gender and sexual identity.
Marxist Criticism
A Marxist critic looks for class structures, economic inequality, ideology, material conditions, labour, social hierarchy, and the ways dominant groups maintain power.
The critic examines how economic and social structures influence characters and events. The critic identifies conflicts between social groups, questions apparently natural hierarchies, exposes ideological assumptions, and investigates whether the text reinforces or challenges dominant systems.
Feminist/Gender Criticism
A Feminist/Gender critic looks for patriarchy, unequal power between genders, representations of women, gender roles, female agency, social expectations, and the construction of femininity and masculinity.
The critic examines who has authority and who is silenced or controlled. The critic questions assumptions about masculinity and femininity, identifies patriarchal structures, compares the opportunities available to different genders, and reinterprets marginalized voices.
Ecocriticism
An ecocritic looks for representations of nature, human–nature relationships, environmental ethics, anthropocentrism, exploitation, ecological interconnectedness, and the division between nature and culture.
The critic examines how nature is represented and asks whether human beings are positioned as masters of the natural world. The critic questions anthropocentric assumptions, investigates the consequences of attempts to control nature, and considers relationships between human, non-human, and material worlds.
Queer Criticism
A Queer critic looks for heteronormativity, rigid gender and sexual categories, non-normative identities, coded relationships, secrecy, repression, gender fluidity, and assumptions about what constitutes a "normal" identity or relationship.
The critic questions supposedly fixed categories of gender and sexuality. The critic identifies moments where identities or relationships do not fit conventional norms, examines how society disciplines difference, and considers how gender can be performed rather than understood as completely fixed or natural.
What does this comparison teach us?
The four approaches differ because they ask different questions of the same literary material. Marxist criticism asks us to notice economic and ideological power. Feminist/Gender criticism makes us examine gendered power and patriarchal structures. Ecocriticism shifts attention towards human–nature relations and anthropocentrism. Queer criticism questions heteronormativity and supposedly fixed identities.
Therefore, a theory becomes useful only when it becomes an analytical practice. Knowing that Marxism is concerned with class is not enough. A student must examine how class actually operates in the text. Similarly, knowing that Feminist Criticism discusses patriarchy does not automatically make every discussion of a female character feminist criticism.
"Theory provides the lens, but criticism is the act of looking through that lens and explaining what becomes visible."
What is the difference between knowing a critical theory and actually using a critical theory?
Knowing a critical theory means understanding its major concepts, vocabulary, thinkers, and historical background. Using a critical theory means turning those concepts into questions that can be applied to a particular literary text.
For example, knowing that Marxist criticism examines class is theoretical knowledge; identifying how labour, wealth, property, and social hierarchy influence a character's choices is actual Marxist analysis. Similarly, knowing the concept of patriarchy is different from showing how a literary character is denied agency because of a patriarchal structure.
Ecocriticism becomes meaningful when the reader examines how the text constructs the relationship between humans and the non-human world rather than merely pointing out descriptions of nature. Queer criticism similarly requires an examination of assumptions about gender and sexuality rather than simply searching for LGBTQ+ characters.
In other words, theory provides the lens, but criticism is the act of looking through that lens and explaining what becomes visible.
Source-supported material and analytical synthesis
The broad descriptions of the four approaches, including class struggle, ideology, patriarchy, representation of women, gender construction, anthropocentrism, human–nature relationships, heteronormativity, gender performativity, and the examples discussed in Barad's article, are directly supported by the supplied source.
The comparative organization into "What does the critic look for?", "What does the critic DO?", "Illustration," and "Question" is a synthesis designed for this activity. The specific questions and some of the explanatory connections are also analytical synthesis rather than quotations from the source.
Applying the Four Lenses to One Text
Literary Text: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is particularly suitable for this activity because it can be approached from several theoretical directions. The novel contains questions about scientific ambition, social hierarchy, gender, creation, nature, isolation, identity, and social exclusion.
The following readings do not claim that one interpretation is the only correct interpretation. Instead, each critic notices something that another lens may leave in the background.
Marxist Critic: What Would a Marxist Critic Notice?
Textual Evidence
Victor Frankenstein comes from a wealthy and socially respected Genevan family. Early in the novel, Victor describes his family as one of distinction, while the Creature enters society without property, social status, family protection, or economic security. The Creature's education comes through observing the De Lacey family, where he learns about social organization, labour, poverty, and property. He recognizes that the family is poor and observes Felix working to support them.
Critical Concept: Class, Ideology, and Material Conditions
A Marxist critic would therefore look beyond the Creature's appearance and examine the material and social conditions that influence his exclusion. The Creature does not initially possess the social resources that allow people such as Victor to participate comfortably in society. His exclusion is connected not only to physical appearance but also to his absence of family, property, status, and social recognition.
The novel also presents Victor's scientific activity as a form of privileged individual pursuit. He has access to education, scientific knowledge, travel, and resources that allow him to undertake an extraordinary experiment. A Marxist reading can therefore ask who has access to knowledge and power, and what happens when such power is concentrated in the hands of an individual.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A conventional reading may concentrate on Victor's ambition and the Creature's revenge. A Marxist reading shifts some attention towards the social conditions surrounding their conflict. The Creature's suffering can be considered partly through his exclusion from social structures that provide belonging, security, and recognition.
The reading does not mean that the novel is simply "about rich versus poor." Rather, it investigates how social position, material conditions, and dominant ideas about value affect people's lives.
Feminist/Gender Critic: What Would a Feminist/Gender Critic Notice?
Textual Evidence
One of the most striking features of Frankenstein is Victor's desire to create life without a woman. Victor describes the creation of the Creature as an experiment in which he attempts to produce a human being through scientific labour.
Later, the Creature asks Victor to create a female companion. Victor initially agrees but eventually destroys the unfinished female creature because he fears the consequences of her existence. The novel therefore repeatedly connects creation, reproduction, male scientific ambition, and control over life.
The women in the novel, meanwhile, frequently occupy domestic and relational roles. Elizabeth Lavenza, Justine Moritz, Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, and other female characters are important to the emotional structure of the story, but they generally possess less institutional and scientific power than Victor.
Critical Concept: Patriarchy, Gender Construction, and Agency
A Feminist/Gender critic could examine Victor's attempt to remove women from biological reproduction. His laboratory becomes a substitute for the reproductive role traditionally associated with women. The creation of life becomes an overwhelmingly male-controlled scientific project.
The critic could also question why the female Creature is denied the opportunity to exist. Victor fears that she might reproduce or become uncontrollable, and therefore he exercises absolute authority over whether she will be created. This moment reveals a struggle over who has the power to define, produce, and control female existence.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A conventional reading might understand Victor's destruction of the female Creature mainly as a plot decision motivated by fear. A Feminist/Gender reading makes the question of gendered power more visible.
It asks why creation is repeatedly associated with male scientific authority and why the female body becomes an object that can be produced, judged, and destroyed by male decision-making.
At the same time, the reading should not reduce the novel to "men are bad and women are good." Instead, it examines the structures that distribute agency unevenly between genders.
Ecocritic: What Would an Ecocritic Notice?
Textual Evidence
Nature is one of the most powerful recurring presences in Frankenstein. Mountains, glaciers, forests, lakes, storms, and the Arctic landscape repeatedly appear throughout the novel. Victor often turns towards natural landscapes when he is emotionally disturbed.
At the same time, his scientific project represents an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of life and manipulate natural processes. The novel ultimately connects his ambition with devastating consequences.
Critical Concept: Anthropocentrism and Human–Nature Relations
An Ecocritic would examine the tension between Victor's desire to control natural processes and the novel's repeated presentation of nature as powerful, interconnected, and larger than the individual human being.
Victor treats scientific knowledge as a means through which the limits of human existence can be overcome. His experiment therefore raises an ecological question:
"What happens when human beings understand nature primarily as something to be mastered?"
The natural landscape also provides an alternative to Victor's laboratory. Mountains, glaciers, and forests frequently become spaces in which characters experience awe, reflection, fear, or temporary relief.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A purely Gothic reading might treat the natural landscape mainly as an atmospheric background. An Ecocritical reading instead asks what the landscape is doing conceptually. Nature becomes more than scenery: it becomes part of the novel's argument about human ambition and limitation.
The ecological reading therefore transforms Frankenstein from only a story about a scientist and his creation into a story that also questions humanity's desire to dominate natural processes.
Queer Critic: What Would a Queer Critic Notice?
Textual Evidence
A Queer reading of Frankenstein must be careful because the novel does not openly present modern LGBTQ+ identities. Instead, the critic examines the novel's structures of intimacy, identity, reproduction, and normative social expectations.
Victor's creation of life without sexual reproduction disrupts conventional assumptions about how new life should be produced. His relationships with male characters are also emotionally significant, particularly his friendships with Henry Clerval and other male companions. At the same time, the narrative repeatedly places heterosexual marriage and family within its social framework.
The Creature's existence itself also challenges stable categories: he is neither conventionally human nor simply an object, and his identity is repeatedly imposed upon him by other people.
Critical Concept: Heteronormativity, Identity, and Gender Boundaries
A Queer critic might therefore ask how the novel constructs "normal" identity and how it treats a being who does not fit established categories.
The Creature's body refuses easy classification. He is human-like but socially categorized as monstrous. His existence also unsettles conventional ideas about birth, family, reproduction, and belonging.
Victor's attempt to create life without conventional sexual reproduction can be read as a disruption of the expected relationship between sexuality, reproduction, and family. However, this should remain an interpretation rather than being presented as proof that Shelley intended the novel to express a modern queer identity.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
The Queer lens makes the instability of identity more visible. The Creature is repeatedly told what he is before he is allowed to define himself. His difference becomes a social problem because society expects recognizable categories.
A Queer interpretation does not require claiming that every character is secretly queer. Instead, it examines how the text constructs norms and how characters who do not fit those norms experience exclusion, secrecy, fear, or isolation.
What Becomes Visible When the Same Literary Text Is Viewed Through Four Different Critical Lenses?
Reading Frankenstein through four critical lenses demonstrates that interpretation changes according to the questions we bring to the text.
Marxist Lens
Makes social hierarchy, material conditions, access to knowledge, and exclusion more visible.
Feminist/Gender Lens
Highlights the distribution of authority between men and women and the novel's treatment of reproduction and female creation.
Ecocritical Lens
Shifts attention towards human attempts to control nature and the ethical consequences of such ambition.
Queer Lens
Examines the boundaries of normality, identity, reproduction, and belonging.
None of these readings has to completely replace the others. Instead, they overlap and sometimes reveal different dimensions of the same event. Victor's creation, for example, can simultaneously be considered a scientific experiment, a challenge to reproductive norms, an attempt to dominate natural processes, and an act made possible by privileged access to knowledge and resources.
This demonstrates that literary criticism is not simply about applying labels to texts. It is about asking precise questions and supporting interpretations with textual evidence.
Human Verification
Generative AI can produce useful interpretations, but its answers cannot simply be accepted without checking. The worksheet specifically asks the student to verify whether the explanation is consistent with the source, whether the AI has provided actual textual evidence, and whether it has invented quotations, events, or interpretations.
1. Is the explanation consistent with the source?
Yes, the broad explanations of Marxist, Feminist/Gender, Ecocritical, and Queer criticism are consistent with Dilip Barad's source. The source identifies class, ideology, historical context, and hegemony as important to Marxist criticism; patriarchy, women's representation, and gender construction for Feminist criticism; environmental representation, anthropocentrism, and human–nature relationships for Ecocriticism; and heteronormativity, queer representation, gender performativity, and gender/sexual boundaries for Queer Criticism.
2. Has Feminist Criticism been confused with simply discussing women?
No. A Feminist/Gender reading does not merely count female characters or describe women's experiences. It examines gendered power relations, representation, agency, patriarchy, and the social construction of gender.
3. Has Marxism been reduced to "rich versus poor"?
It should not be. Class is important, but Marxist criticism also examines ideology, material conditions, historical context, labour, social structures, and the maintenance of dominant power.
4. Has Ecocriticism been reduced to descriptions of nature?
No. Nature descriptions are only evidence. Ecocriticism asks deeper questions about the relationship between human beings and the environment, anthropocentrism, exploitation, ecological ethics, and the human desire to control nature.
5. Has the Queer reading assumed that every text must contain a queer identity?
No. A careful Queer reading does not require discovering an LGBTQ+ character in every literary work. Instead, it can examine the norms through which sexuality, gender, identity, family, and relationships are constructed.
6. Has actual textual evidence been provided?
The readings above are based on events and structures that occur in the novel: Victor's scientific experiment, his social background, the Creature's exclusion and education, the request for a female companion, the destruction of the female Creature, the recurring natural landscapes, and the novel's representation of family and social belonging.
7. Has GenAI invented quotations or events?
The analysis intentionally avoids presenting AI-generated quotations as if they were Shelley's words. This is especially important because Generative AI can sometimes produce inaccurate quotations. The primary text should therefore be consulted whenever an exact quotation is required.
One Point of Agreement and One Point I Would Question
What I Agree With
I agree with the Ecocritical interpretation because the relationship between Victor's scientific ambition and the natural world is strongly supported by the novel and also directly discussed in Barad's source.
What I Would Question
I would be more cautious about the Queer interpretation. It can productively examine identity, reproduction, social norms, and categories of belonging, but the novel should not be treated as if it straightforwardly represents contemporary LGBTQ+ identities.
How Did GenAI Help Me Understand the Difference Between a Literary Theory and the Practice of Literary Criticism?
Generative AI helped me understand that knowing a literary theory and actually using that theory are two different things. Before this activity, I understood Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism mainly through their important concepts. However, applying the four approaches to Frankenstein showed me how a critic turns theory into questions about a particular text.
I learned that a Marxist critic does not simply look for rich and poor characters but examines class, ideology, material conditions, and power. Similarly, a Feminist/Gender critic does not simply discuss women but investigates patriarchy, agency, and the construction of gender. The Ecocritical reading helped me understand that nature is not merely background scenery; it can become part of the text's argument about human power and environmental relationships.
One claim I had to question was the Queer reading. I found it useful for examining identity, reproduction, and social norms, but I also realized that I should not force a modern queer interpretation onto a nineteenth-century text without textual evidence. This verification process taught me that AI can help generate possibilities, but the human reader must check evidence, context, and interpretation.
Conclusion
This activity demonstrates why literary criticism is an active process rather than a collection of definitions. A literary text contains many possible relationships between characters, society, ideology, nature, gender, identity, and power. A critical theory gives the reader a particular way of making those relationships visible.
Frankenstein provides an especially productive example. The Marxist reading draws attention to social position and access to power; the Feminist/Gender reading examines reproduction, authority, and gender; the Ecocritical reading investigates humanity's attempt to control nature; and the Queer reading questions the boundaries through which identity and normality are constructed.
"AI can suggest a critical pathway, but it cannot replace close reading and human judgment."
The most important lesson from using Generative AI is that AI can suggest a critical pathway, but it cannot replace close reading and human judgment. The student must return to the primary text, verify evidence, distinguish fact from interpretation, and decide whether an interpretation is convincing.
In this sense, Generative AI becomes most useful not when it gives a final answer, but when it helps the reader ask better questions.
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Works Cited
Barad, Dilip. "On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism." ResearchGate, 12 Nov. 2024.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Project Gutenberg.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from BrontΓ« to Lessing. Princeton UP, 1977.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, 2015.
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