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Taking as our starting point Shelley 's story about a scientist who assembles and animates a monster from pieces of human and animal corpses , we will track the deformed body across a range of nineteenth - and twentieth-century literary and medical texts.Examining the multiple and shifting ways deformity has been narrated over time , we will pay particular attention to moments when the misshapen body becomes the means of articulating transgressive fantasies of culture ; in other words , when twisted bodies give rise to twisted stories . Once more , as in the days when his writing had had a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him , he was conscious of that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release , The air of the place seemed to hold more oxygen ; as if his own specific gravity had changed , his very tread seemed less ponderable . Throughout the century , whole scientific disciplines grew up around the threatening figures of criminals , homosexuals , paupers and hysterical women ; while even such seemingly innocuous topics as masturbation , nervousness and dirt were pervaded by a sense of danger and disgust . The lost must remain lost . Chef of those was the way in which she persisted in thrusting herself into his thoughts ; and , whenever he was quick enough , he sent her packing the moment she made her appearance there , the truth was that she was not merely a bore ; she had always been that ; it had now come to the pitch when her very presence in his fancy was inimical to the full enjoyment of certain experiences . For another thing , he could not yet think of that letter of Barrett 's , nor of a little scene that had followed it , without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow . It appeared that it was himself who was to be put into it ; and as they lifted him up he saw that the inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the cab , but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this something was a hooded stretcher .