engleski

Adaptation as Emancipation: Semantic Decoding of the Female Protagonist in Kenneth Branagh’s Film Adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Novel Frankenstein

Based on the case study of Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the article represents an intervention in discourses of adaptation as literary criticism, highlighting different ways in which adaptations can critique literary texts, emancipating themselves from the suggested authority of the novel(s) by broadening the interpretative possibilities through the critical appraisal of historical and contextual circumstances of the source text. Namely, Mary Shelley’s novel is abundant with women who embody the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries female social position in that they are devoid of the right to speak and decide for themselves on any matter besides the “trivial, ” emotional ones. However, Shelley’s representation is far from condoning the state that her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, calls the “state of perpetual childhood ; ” rather, it is to be read as a severe criticism thereof. Consequently, although Branagh’s adaptation, more specifically his emancipation of Elizabeth’s character, is often viewed as a significant departure from Shelley’s text, the aim is to show that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein closely follows the undercurrents of the novel and in fact emphasizes – due to the improved social status of women in the twentieth century – Elizabeth’s independence that was present ever so subtly in the literary text.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh, emancipation, adaptation

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