Explore how the writers’ of your two chosen texts present language and storytelling.
Language and storytelling have the power to shape our perception of the world around us, to
manipulate or to educate. In Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, language and storytelling is used
to both give power to and take away power from the Creature. Perhaps this was inspired by
the age of enlightenment and the rise of the disenfranchised during the industrial revolution.
Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, language is seen to oppress the
Handmaids’ and storytelling is used to highlight individual tragedy, in a bid to warn her
readers about the dangers of the rise of the quasi-Christian right-wing ideology that has
begun to permeate America. Overall, in both novels, language and storytelling is used as a
form of power.
In both novels, Shelley and Atwood highlight how the manipulation of language and stories is
a form of power, in that Shelley presents the Creature through the point of view of those who
seek to discredit him, whereas Atwood highlights the widespread manipulation of language
to oppress women. At the start of Shelley’s novel, we are immediately conditioned to feel
sympathy for Victor, whose ‘limbs were nearly frozen’ and was ‘cold and suffering’. This lexis
of pain, cold and fatigue evokes sympathy in the reader, making us more willing to trust
Victor and his narrative. As the novel progresses, we continue to see Victor’s side of the
story, where Shelley paints a gruesome, monstrous image of the creature with ‘watery eyes’,
a ‘shrivelled complexion’ and ‘straight black lips’. This image of the creature horrifies us as
the reader, making us fearful of the ‘miserable monster’ and ‘demoniacal corpse’ Victor has
created. These descriptions further the book into the gothic genre, which is often
characterised by evil beings wreaking havoc. Shelley continues Victor’s derogatory epithets
throughout the novel, with the Creature being presented as a ‘wretch’, ‘demon’ and
‘monster’, responsible for the deaths of ‘William’, ‘Justine’ and ‘Elizabeth’. Through Victor’s
narrative and derogatory language of the Creature, Shelley successfully invites us to
question the reliability of those we give power to. As the upper class, white man that Victor
represents, we as a reader question his language and story, is the one who created such a
being really responsible for the ‘hapless victims’ or a victim himself? Therefore, perhaps
Shelley is warning us that language and storytelling can be manipulated and we shouldn’t
automatically believe what we think.
Similarly, in Atwood’s novel, she also highlights the manipulation of language and stories.
Atwood successfully crafts a world in which women are viewed in a hierarchical structure,
with ‘wives’, ‘handmaids’ and ‘Marthas’. This use of language shapes the purpose of each
woman, to be subservient to a man in love, sex and service. In contrast a ‘Commander’ has
connotations of leadership, bravery and power, immediately suggesting that the structure of
Gilead is based upon the subservience of women, the groups women are put into
manipulate them through language alone on what their purpose is. The subservience of
women to men has recurred throughout history, with handmaids being rather similar to
concubines and men typically always assuming positions of power, even now. Atwood
names her protagonist ‘Offred’, meaning Of Fred, manipulating her to be in possession of a
man, with no separate identity of her own. Furthermore, Atwood highlights the use of
language as a tool to indoctrinate the population, with twisted inverted biblical allusions, such
as ‘Gilead is within you’ and ‘under his eye’, the prepositions ‘within’ and ‘under’ suggesting
that there is no privacy, and anything the Handmaids do is monitored. This complete social
control creates an incredibly dystopian society, making the reader fearful about the possible
