The Story of Safie: Mahometanism as Literary and Cultural Otherness in "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus"

Introduced as the daughter of a «Christian Arab», Safie is an only seemingly marginal character in Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Her story unfolds across the very centre of the novel, and the letters that she exchanged with Felix De Lacey enable the Creature – and, by extension, Victor and Walton – to validate the authenticity of his narrative. Because of her dark and mysterious appearance, and her non-European upbringing, scholars have mostly read Safie as the embodiment of cultural otherness, an example of what Edward Said famously termed the «Romantic Orientalist project». Whilst embracing this claim, this article argues that Safie’s story does not only provide an Orientalist cameo, but it also represents a textual embodiment of narrative alterity. This embedded narrative is grafted on multiple analogies and allusions that are rife with cultural and political implications. Such correspondences suggest Mary Shelley engages with the discourse of Romantic Mahometanism, whose cornerstone is certainly Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in order to explore domestic and social concerns – from female education and empowerment to the need to dispel gender divide for individual and social progress to occur. From this perspective, the article claims that Safie reveals anamorphic and isomorphic relationships that unfold both within and beyond the boundaries of Frankenstein.