Boosting Student Motivation with Graphic Novel Adaptations : A Gender Analysis of Frankenstein and Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel and Their Place in the Swedish EFL Classroom

Sammanfattning

This essay analyses how the concepts of gendering, gender fatalism, stereotypes, and hegemonic masculinity underpin Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, comparatively to the adaptation Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel by Brigit Viney and Jason Cobley. The method applied is a thematic reading of said concepts combined with a double reading. The latter focuses both on how the concepts may appear to the reader and on what they, on a deeper level, may be seen to convey. As a result, this essay finds that while the gendered aspects seem to reinforce patriarchal structures they are, in fact, opposing them. Specifically, Shelley’s use of a destabilised male narrative — through, inter alia, the continuous shifts between who is the narrator and the narratee — is a means to subvert the traditionally patriarchal narrative conventions of the novel. This has, however, partly disappeared in the adaptation process from the classic to the graphic novel due to the overarching goal of simplifying the story. Further, the concept of bridging by using a graphic novel adaptation is suggested in this essay as a method to motivate lower secondary students when teaching canonical literature. Consequently, it is concluded that this approach to teaching canonical literature opens up for the possibility of a multifaceted analysis of literature, including many different gender aspects, in the Swedish EFL classroom.