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Sewing Lives: Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein And The Global Garment Industry, Sarah Garland

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper takes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and uses it as an extended metaphor to investigate the points of destructive alienation and disassociation within the globalized consumption of clothing. The promise of new clothing is a set of garments that function like Victor’s dream of creation; materials are stitched together to give objects that match our closest-held ideals. And yet, because of our quick Victor-Frankenstein-like alienation from these ‘fast fashion’ objects when they no longer please us, clothing becomes, like the monster, an abjected figure for waste and shame, moving around the globe destructively, created from the bodies of the poor …