What is Marxist Literary Criticism?

Characteristics:
 Marxist literary criticism tries to find the link between the history, economic situation,
and even the political situation of the time a work was written along with the actual
content of that work.
 Marxist Literary Criticism is heavily concerned with identifying the historical, political,
and social situation of a work through the lens of material economics.
 It does not attempt to discover hidden meanings within texts but rather supplies “what the
text cannot say” (454).
o Literary works are viewed as a product of work.
 Existing within the realm of economics (production & consumption)
 Describing and reinforcing prevailing ideologies, politics, economics
 Initial criticisms focused on 
o How the alienation of the worker would affect the arts
o Marxists believed that economics "provides the 'base, or 'infrastructure' of society,
but from that base emerges a 'superstructure' consisting of law, politics,
philosophy, religion, and art" (449).
 According to Marx “the relationship between base and superstructure may
be indirect and fluid” (449)
 Superstructures usually lag behind the base
 One thing of interest to Marxists was the idea of structuralism, which was a way to study
the different elements of culture, like literature, as a system of signs
 Marxist literary critics try to argue the links between the work of an author and the
society they lived in
 A rebuttal to Marxist Literary Criticism is that it can often “isolate economics from
culture” and overlook the individual in favor of the masses
o This criticism is met with Eagleton’s view that “there are in fact no masses; there
are only ways of seeing people as masses” (455)
 Marxist views on Frankenstein
o By introducing a historical view of Frankenstein one can ascertain how the
“French Revolution had produced a kind of monster in Europe” (457)

Assumptions of Marxist Literary Critics:

 Marxist literary critics work with the assumption that there is a connection between an
artist and the society they live in.
 It does not separate the artist or aesthetic of a writer from things like politics, economics,
and history.
 Critics assume that the state of society directly affects the artist and their view of the
world, therefore, affecting the meaning of their work.
 Critics believe that the state of the economy has the most influence over the work of an
artist.

 Marxist Criticism Applied to Frankenstein:

 Mary Shelley could not escape the history of the recent French Revolution
 The text, therefore, was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic changes
occurring during that time.
 However, the text does not address this outright. This can be understood as the prevailing
ideologies- a time where Britain was growing in conservatism- influencing the content of
the literature.
 The monster can be read as representing the proletariat because of its creation out of
several people or the masses (475).
 Additionally, the monster’s rebellion toward Frankenstein can represent how, in the
French Revolution, the elites who took over France from the monarchs released a
“monster” in the sense that the working class even rebelled against them. Therefore, what
they “created” ended up rebelling against them.
 Works Cited

Smith, Johanna M., editor. “What Is Marxist Criticism?” Frankenstein: Complete, Authoritative

Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays

from Contemporary Critical Perspectives, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Ross C

Murfin, Third ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016, pp. 446-80.