Literary Criticism and GenAI: Reading Frankenstein Through Four Critical Lenses

Understanding Marxist, Feminist/Gender, Ecocritical and Queer Criticism through Generative AI

Introduction

Generative Artificial Intelligence has become an increasingly useful tool in literary studies. It can provide explanations, suggest interpretations, compare theoretical approaches, and help students approach a literary text from different critical perspectives. However, using GenAI for literary criticism should not mean simply asking for definitions of theories. The more useful approach is to ask AI to demonstrate how a literary critic actually reads and interprets a text.

For this activity, I explored four important approaches to literary criticism: Marxist Criticism, Feminist/Gender Criticism, Ecocriticism, and Queer Criticism. The primary source for understanding these approaches was Dilip Barad's “On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism.” The source explains the major concepts, questions, and methods associated with each critical approach.

For the practical application, I selected Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This text is particularly suitable because it can be interpreted through several critical perspectives. The source itself uses Frankenstein as an example of Ecocritical reading, especially in relation to Victor Frankenstein's attempt to control nature.

Step 1: Understanding What a Literary Critic Actually Does

A literary theory provides a particular way of looking at a literary text. However, knowing the terminology of a theory is different from actually practising criticism. A critic uses concepts to ask questions, identify textual evidence, examine relationships, and develop an interpretation.

The four approaches can therefore be understood not simply through definitions but through the actions performed by a critic while reading.

Marxist Criticism: Reading Literature through Class and Power

A Marxist critic examines literature in relation to class, economic conditions, ideology, material circumstances, social power, and historical context. The source explains that Marxist criticism understands literature as being influenced by the economic and historical structures of its society. It also considers how literature may reinforce or challenge dominant ideologies.

A Marxist critic therefore does more than look for rich and poor characters. The critic examines who possesses power, who controls resources, who performs labour, who benefits from existing social structures, and how ideology influences people's understanding of society.

For example, Charles Dickens's Hard Times can be examined through the experiences of industrial workers and the economic structures of Victorian society. Stephen Blackpool's difficulties can be connected to the conditions of the working class, while Gradgrind's emphasis on facts can be considered in relation to the values of an industrial society.

A Marxist critic might ask:

How does the literary text represent class relations, economic power, and the material conditions of its society?

Feminist/Gender Criticism: Reading Gender and Patriarchal Power

Feminist criticism examines the representation of gender, patriarchy, women's agency, gender roles, and the social construction of femininity and masculinity.

The source explains that Feminist Criticism challenges patriarchal structures and examines how women are represented within cultural narratives. It also considers women's marginalisation and the ways literature can reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles.

A Feminist/Gender critic therefore asks questions such as: Who has authority? Who is allowed to speak? Whose experiences are ignored? How are masculinity and femininity constructed? Does the text challenge or reproduce patriarchal assumptions?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper provides an important example. The narrator's confinement and denial of intellectual freedom can be read as a criticism of patriarchal medical and social structures. Her psychological deterioration becomes connected with the restrictions placed upon women's autonomy.

A Feminist/Gender critic might ask:

How does the text construct gender, and whose power or interests are supported or challenged by that construction?

Ecocriticism: Reading the Relationship between Humans and Nature

Ecocriticism focuses on the relationship between human beings and the natural world. It examines environmental representation, anthropocentrism, ecological responsibility, and the ways literature represents humanity's relationship with nature.

The source specifically identifies anthropocentrism, human–nature relationships, environmental representation, and ecological ethics as important concerns of Ecocriticism.

An ecocritic therefore does not simply count descriptions of mountains, forests, rivers, or animals. Instead, the critic asks what those descriptions mean and how the text understands the relationship between human beings and the non-human world.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein provides a particularly useful example. Victor Frankenstein attempts to penetrate the secrets of life and create a living being through scientific experimentation. His desire to control natural processes can be interpreted as an example of humanity's attempt to dominate nature. The consequences of his experiment raise questions about scientific ambition, responsibility, and the limits of human control.

An ecocritic might ask:

How does the text represent the relationship between human beings and nature, and does it challenge an anthropocentric worldview?

Queer Criticism: Questioning Norms of Gender and Sexuality

Queer Criticism examines assumptions surrounding sexuality, gender identity, heteronormativity, gender fluidity, and social expectations about relationships and identity.

According to the source, Queer Criticism challenges heteronormative assumptions and examines how literature represents or questions conventional ideas of gender and sexuality. Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity is particularly important to this approach.

A queer critic therefore does not simply search for LGBTQ+ characters. Instead, the critic can examine how a text establishes the idea of "normal" identity and relationships. The critic may also investigate secrecy, repression, coded meanings, and relationships that challenge established categories.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is one example mentioned in the source. A queer reading can examine the relationship between Dorian and Basil Hallward, together with secrecy, repression, identity, and Victorian social expectations.

A Queer critic might ask:

What assumptions about gender, sexuality, desire, and "normal" relationships does the text reproduce, question, or destabilise?

From Knowing Theory to Practising Criticism

One of the most important lessons from this activity is the difference between knowing a critical theory and using a critical theory.

Knowing a theory means understanding its concepts, terminology, history, and major thinkers. Practising criticism requires the reader to apply those concepts to a particular literary text. A student who knows Marxism may understand concepts such as class and ideology, but a Marxist reading requires the student to identify how these concepts operate through characters, conflicts, institutions, and social conditions.

Similarly, Feminist Criticism requires more than discussing female characters. Ecocriticism requires more than identifying descriptions of nature. Queer Criticism requires more than searching for queer characters.

In actual literary criticism, the process can be understood as:

Critical Concept → Textual Evidence → Analysis → Interpretation

Therefore, literary criticism becomes an active process of questioning, examining, identifying, challenging, comparing, uncovering, and reinterpreting the text.

Step 2: Applying Four Critical Lenses to Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: One Text, Four Readings

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is often discussed as a Gothic novel and a story about scientific ambition, creation, responsibility, and isolation. However, when the novel is examined through different critical approaches, different aspects of the same narrative become visible.

1. A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein

A Marxist critic may notice the differences in social position, material resources, education, privilege, and social belonging among the characters.

Victor Frankenstein comes from a privileged family and has access to education, scientific knowledge, travel, and financial resources. In contrast, the Creature has no property, social position, family, or recognised place within society. The De Lacey family also experiences poverty and displacement.

The critical concept here is class and material conditions.

Through this lens, the Creature's suffering can be interpreted not only as an individual experience of rejection but also as a form of social exclusion. His desire for companionship, shelter, education, and acceptance is connected to his material and social position.

A Marxist reading therefore makes us ask:

How do social position, material resources, education, and exclusion influence the lives of the characters in Frankenstein?

2. A Feminist/Gender Reading of Frankenstein

A Feminist/Gender critic may focus on the position of women and the control exercised over reproduction and decision-making.

Characters such as Elizabeth Lavenza, Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, Justine Moritz, and Safie experience social circumstances shaped by male authority and wider gender expectations.

Victor's creation of life without female participation is particularly significant. He attempts to reproduce life through scientific experimentation rather than through conventional biological reproduction. Later, when he begins creating a female companion for the Creature, he destroys her before completing the project because he fears the consequences of her existence.

The critical concepts here include patriarchy, gender roles, agency, and reproductive control.

A Feminist/Gender reading therefore asks:

Who has the authority to create, decide, control, and speak in Frankenstein, and how are these forms of authority connected with gender?

3. An Ecocritical Reading of Frankenstein

Ecocriticism provides one of the clearest approaches to Frankenstein because the novel repeatedly explores the relationship between human beings and nature.

The novel contains mountains, glaciers, forests, storms, lakes, and the Arctic landscape. These environments are not merely decorative backgrounds. They frequently become spaces of reflection, fear, isolation, and confrontation.

Victor's scientific experiment is particularly important from an ecocritical perspective. He attempts to discover and manipulate the secrets of life. His desire to control natural processes ultimately produces destructive consequences.

The critical concepts here include anthropocentrism, human–nature relations, ecological responsibility, and the limits of human control.

The source itself explains that an ecocritical reading of Frankenstein can interpret Victor's attempt to "conquer" nature as a representation of humanity's desire to control the natural world.

An ecocritic might therefore ask:

Does Victor's attempt to control nature reveal the dangers of placing human ambition above natural and ethical limits?

4. A Queer Reading of Frankenstein

A Queer reading of Frankenstein requires careful interpretation. The novel does not explicitly identify its characters according to modern LGBTQ+ identities. Therefore, a queer reading should not simply label characters.

Instead, the critic can examine norms surrounding identity, relationships, reproduction, family, and social belonging.

Victor's relationships with Henry Clerval and the Creature can be examined in terms of their unusual emotional intensity and their position outside conventional family structures. The Creature itself also disrupts conventional categories of body, identity, creation, and social belonging.

The creation of life without conventional heterosexual reproduction is another important feature that can be examined through a queer theoretical framework.

The critical concepts include heteronormativity, identity, gender boundaries, social norms, and non-normative relationships.

A Queer critic might ask:

How does Frankenstein challenge or complicate conventional ideas about identity, relationships, reproduction, and social belonging?

What Becomes Visible When One Text Is Read Through Four Lenses?

The four approaches demonstrate that the same literary text can produce different questions and interpretations.

A Marxist reading makes class, privilege, material conditions, education, and social exclusion visible.

A Feminist/Gender reading draws attention to patriarchy, women's agency, gender roles, reproduction, and authority.

An Ecocritical reading focuses on humanity's relationship with nature, scientific ambition, anthropocentrism, and ecological responsibility.

A Queer reading examines identity, social norms, relationships, reproduction, and the boundaries between normative and non-normative categories.

These interpretations do not necessarily contradict one another. Instead, they demonstrate how a literary text can contain multiple layers of meaning. Each critical lens directs the reader's attention toward particular questions and textual relationships.

Thus, Frankenstein becomes more than a story about a scientist and his creation. Through different critical approaches, it becomes a text through which we can examine class, gender, nature, identity, power, social exclusion, and cultural assumptions.

Step 3: Human Verification

GenAI can produce useful literary interpretations, but its responses should not automatically be accepted as correct. The final stage of this activity therefore involves checking the AI's interpretation against the source and the original literary text.

The explanation of the four theories is broadly consistent with Dilip Barad's source. Marxist criticism is connected with class, ideology, economic and historical conditions, and hegemony. Feminist criticism examines patriarchy, gender representation, women's marginalisation, and gender construction. Ecocriticism examines environmental representation, human–nature relationships, and anthropocentrism. Queer Criticism questions heteronormativity, fixed ideas of gender and sexuality, and conventional boundaries.

The activity also shows why theories should not be reduced to simple formulas. Marxism is not merely "rich versus poor"; Feminist Criticism is not merely "women's issues"; Ecocriticism is not simply "nature description"; and Queer Criticism does not require every literary text to contain an explicitly queer character.

The queer interpretation of Frankenstein, in particular, needs careful verification because the novel does not explicitly identify its characters through contemporary LGBTQ+ categories. Therefore, the queer reading should remain an interpretation of norms, identity, relationships, and boundaries, rather than a factual claim about characters' sexual identities.

Final Reflection: How GenAI Helped Me Understand Literary Criticism

GenAI helped me understand that literary theory is not simply a collection of definitions. It is a method of asking particular questions of a literary text. Before completing this activity, I could define Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism, but applying all four approaches to Frankenstein showed me how different critical perspectives can reveal different aspects of the same work.

One important insight I learned from GenAI is that criticism follows a process: critical concept → textual evidence → analysis → interpretation. For example, an ecocritical reading of Frankenstein is not simply about identifying mountains, forests, or landscapes. It can examine Victor's attempt to control natural processes and the consequences of his scientific ambition.

At the same time, I learned that AI-generated interpretations must be questioned and verified. I had to be particularly careful with the queer reading because the novel does not explicitly define its characters through modern LGBTQ+ identities. This reminded me that an AI interpretation is not automatically a fact.

Overall, GenAI helped me understand the difference between knowing a literary theory and practising literary criticism. Theory gives us the lens; textual evidence and critical reasoning allow us to use that lens responsibly.

Works Cited

Barad, Dilip. “On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism.” ResearchGate, Nov. 2024. Accessible ResearchGate PDF

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990. Routledge – Gender Trouble

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Project Gutenberg. Read Frankenstein – Project Gutenberg

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2015. Routledge – Critical Theory Today

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 4th ed., Manchester University Press, 2017. Manchester University Press – Beginning Theory

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Siddharth Chauhan

Four Critical Lenses, One Text: A GenAI Reading of Frankenstein