Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1995

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

McGuirk, Carol

Abstract

Two British women writers, Mary Shelley and Muriel Spark, express a curiously similar vision in their novels, creating characters whose solipsistic view of the world finally makes them monsters. Solipsism is the assertion that the self is the only reality that can be known and verified; a doppelganger is a mirror-self or double of the protagonist. The narrative structure and viewpoints in both Frankenstein and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie rely on these two concepts. Victor Frankenstein journeys through solipsism by first creating his monster from necrotic material--dead "selves." Jean Brodie's solipsistic response to her world is to re-"create" and manipulate her student Sandy Stranger as an extension of herself. Both Frankenstein and Jean Brodie experience a paradox of identity, forming but then conflicting with other characters who become their doppelgangers. In both novels, doppelgangers become "harbingers of death" rather than instruments of insight. Both Shelley and Spark demonstrate that a self-centered perspective leads to destructive isolation and alienation from others.

Extent

62 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1995.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT15188

Format

pdf

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