The Uncanny

This article is an attempt to study subject formation in relation to gender in Margaret Atwood's (1939- ) Surfacing (1979) and Bodily Harm (1983) within the frame of the uncanny. The issue of gender has been discussed in Atwood's novels from different perspectives but this article claims that what have been rarely discussed in Atwood's novels are the unrepresentable realities in relation to gender which can be foregrounded by dislodging the uncanny. The uncanny which was once a rather minor issue in Freudian oeuvre has been reconsidered in the contemporary era by prominent thinkers, such as Jean-François Lyotard and Julia Kristeva whose ideas are used in elaborating the unrepresentability of gender in this article. The idea of the female sublime is the most significant issue in the context of the uncanny in this article which challenges any representational system of gender formation and problematizes our preconceived hence familiar perceptions of gender formation and reevaluates them in an unfamiliar, dynamic and unrepresentable space.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is a cornerstone of Gothic literature, renowned for its dark settings and themes of death, isolation, and vengeance, all of which evoke terror. These elements create profound unease in readers, which Sigmund Freud calls the uncanny. While Freud’s psychoanalytic account emphasizes repressed fears and childhood anxieties, Nicholas Royle’s expanded theory redefines the uncanny as a literary mode which destabilizes identity. This article aims to apply Royle’s theoretical framework to analyze Shelley’s characterization of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, focusing on five central concepts: silence and isolation, thought, the double, the phantom, and the death drive and repetition. From this vantage point, the study depicts how silence resounds with ghostly echoes in solitude, thought can make the identity fractured, doubling becomes a rupture of the self, the phantom uncovers hidden traumas and inherited secrets, and the death drive takes form as compulsive repetition which haunts the mind. These elements reframe the novel’s horror as uncanny. The findings suggest that through a Roylean perspective on the uncanny, Shelley’s Frankenstein transcends traditional Gothic boundaries by dramatizing the instability of the self and the persistence of what cannot be fully known or repressed.