 Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself , particularly female authorship , is represented in and through Shelley 's novels . As Mellor explains , Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to " censor her own speech in Frankenstein " . According to Poovey and Mellor , Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer , and " this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality , perversion , and destruction " . 
