Frankenstein and Patchwork Girl

From Professor Wes Chapman:

Many works written after Frankenstein have borrowed from the novel in a lot of different ways, a testament to just how powerfully the novel resonates in our culture. One of the most interesting of these that I know of is Patchwork Girl, a hypertext novel written by Shelley Jackson and recently acquired (thanks to Stephanie Davis-Kahl) by Ames Library.

The premise of Jackson's story is that in some ways we are all (like the monster) patched together from parts of other people, from the genetic acquisition of an uncle's nose to the intellectual influences of every book we have ever read. True to this idea, the hypertext quotes at great length from Shelley's novel, but alters the meaning of the original by adding (among other things) sections in which the female monster is successfully created and smuggled away to America. It's a profound meditation on the nature of identity, and well worth a read for those who are up to an intellectual challenge.

Patchwork Girl is available in the New Materials section of the library.