ABSTRACT
When Mary Shelley published her novel, Frankenstein, in 1818, she did so anonymously, perhaps to disguise her gender. When it was later discovered that the author was, indeed, a young woman, one reviewer wrote about the novel, “For a man, it was excellent, but for a woman, it was wonderful” (Blackwood’s, 1823, as cited in Hindle, 1985). This comment reects the explicit acknowledgment that gender can affect the standards against which a work product is evaluated. In this case, the standard for women is likely lower than the standard for men (work product is expected to be less good in women than in men), but it is also qualitatively different. Although both “excellent” and “wonderful” signify greatness, “wonderful” suggests something astonishing-perhaps especially so given the philosophical and violent nature of the novel.
