Tracing Nicholas Royle’s Concept of the Uncanny in the Characterization of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MA in English Language and Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is a cornerstone of Gothic literature, renowned for its dark settings and themes of death, isolation, and vengeance, all of which evoke terror. These elements create profound unease in readers, which Sigmund Freud calls the uncanny. While Freud’s psychoanalytic account emphasizes repressed fears and childhood anxieties, Nicholas Royle’s expanded theory redefines the uncanny as a literary mode which destabilizes identity. This article aims to apply Royle’s theoretical framework to analyze Shelley’s characterization of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, focusing on five central concepts: silence and isolation, thought, the double, the phantom, and the death drive and repetition. From this vantage point, the study depicts how silence resounds with ghostly echoes in solitude, thought can make the identity fractured, doubling becomes a rupture of the self, the phantom uncovers hidden traumas and inherited secrets, and the death drive takes form as compulsive repetition which haunts the mind. These elements reframe the novel’s horror as uncanny. The findings suggest that through a Roylean perspective on the uncanny, Shelley’s Frankenstein transcends traditional Gothic boundaries by dramatizing the instability of the self and the persistence of what cannot be fully known or repressed.

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References

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History

  • Receive Date: 08 April 2025
  • Revise Date: 19 July 2025
  • Accept Date: 17 August 2025

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