SOURCE: "The Negative Oedipus: Father, Frankenstein, and the Shelleys," in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 2, Winter, 1986, pp. 365-90.

In the essay that follows, Veeder emphasizes the significance of Shelley's relationship with her father, examining less its latent aggressiveness than its latent desire. In order to make his argument, Veeder invokes Freudian psychoanalysis, describing Shelley and Godwin's relationship through the structure of a negative oedipal complex.

It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. .. . I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.

—Quentin Compson, in WILLIAM FAULKNER, The Sound and the Fury

A son can never, in the fullest sense, become a father. Some amount of amateur effort...