The Tempest, Frankenstein & Cloud Nine

The Social Construction of Value Judgments

If we examine the texts of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and Caryl Churchill’s drama Cloud Nine, we see that values are as socially constructed as surely as Dr. Frankenstein constructs his monster. Value judgments abound in all three works. When individuals do not fit into preconceived conceptions, stereotypes, and roles, they are de-valued, considered abhorrent, vile, and monstrous. The dilemma is that the individuals doing the judging can only define the other, i.e., what is NOT them, as “bad”, “wrong”, “monstrous”, or some other devaluation. For example, Caliban is only considered vile because he is not like those who label him as such, i.e., he is not English or white. As Miranda says of her father’s enslaved native “’Tis a villain, sir,/I do not love to look on” (Shakespeare 5).

What we see in the above is a binary at work. In other words, what is white is good and anything not white by virtue of this definition is not good. Thus, individuals who do not fit into a socially constructed label, one constructed by the empowered status-quo, are often labeled as bad, vile, monstrous or something else that devalues them merely because they are NOT what has already been established by their judges as “good.” We see this in Frankenstein. In this novel, Shelly’s depiction of the monster is truly ironic. In an effort to illustrate the social construction of valu

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or enslaving him and rejecting him due to his otherness, i.e., savagery. Caliban is viewed as a savage, a filthy animal who tried to attack Prospero’s daughter. However, when Prospero berates his enslaved servant we can see that the majority of his criticism seems to be the charge that despite doing all he could for Caliban, by not conforming to his teaching Caliban has deserved this isolation, enslavement, and abuse “I have used thee,/Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee/In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate/The honour of my child/…I pitied thee,/Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour/One thing or other: when thou didst not,/Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like/A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes/With words that made them known: But thy vile race/Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which/Could not abide to be with: therefore wast thou/Deservedly confined into this rock” (Shakespeare 5). What we see is that Prospero sounds like someone imposing the Victorian values we see stifling to individual expression in Churchill’s Cloud Nine on someone who is not of that culture, does not adhere to the norms or values that such a culture has constructed, and, therefore, has
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1230
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)