What Is Elizabeth's Role In Frankenstein

The family housekeeper, Justine, is the main suspect when William is killed by strangulation. She is framed because William’s locket was found in her pocket. At Justine’s trial, she is utterly powerless. William’s family believes in her innocence, but the jury ultimately does not. Throughout her defense, she speaks between tears, “‘God knows…How entirely I am innocent’” (Shelley 65). Justine is powerless against the court of law. Although the evidence was planted on her, she has no way of proving her innocence.

The idea that women were suppressed by the rigid patriarchal society leading women to become innocent victims in society is explored significantly in Frankenstein . Through a feminine reading perspective, men dictated women in the Victorian era which lead to them being subservient to the hegemony and becoming silenced victims. This theme is a common gothic preoccupation as women were always depicted as passive and had to accept that they were powerless compared to the superiority of men. Many of the female characters suffered from the patriarchal ideologies such as Justine who mentions, "I have no power… I am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket". Justine's dialogue characterises and reinforces the concept of women accepting their submissive role of having no voice and being vulnerable, therefore becoming silent victims of society. The vulnerability of women is further explored when the protagonist, Victor, discusses about Elizabeth and mentions that she "regretted she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her experience and cultivating her understanding" which emphasises

Because Caroline knows she will no longer be there to make those sacrifices anymore, she passes the torch to Elizabeth by telling her, “Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children” (Shelley 38). This in turn sets up another generation of confined women in the Frankenstein household. Caroline’s sacrifice and Elizabeth’s adoption of the homemaker role subtly represent the struggle of women in this time period to go against the grain of gender roles in society (Brackett). Not only are women confined to limited caretaker roles in Frankenstein, they are continuously and unreasonably vanquished by larger male roles as well. For example, Justine becomes a pawn ensnared in a masculine game of cat and mouse between two irresponsible male roles, Victor and the Creature. Although she truly took no place in the murder of William, nobody believed her and she is executed because of Victors silence (Brackett). The unwarranted wronging of females occurs once again when the creature shows a complete disregard for women by brutally murdering Elizabeth. The monster leaves her “lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair” (Shelley 173). This brash, unadulterated act of savagery towards a woman by a male lead brightly highlights the underlying disposition of men to women, not only in the book, but in Mary Shelley’s era (Brackett). Overall, women in Mary Shelley’s

Women in the novel are considered as the submissive sex compared to their fellow counterpart who are men. In characterization, Shelley characterizes the different women characters in the book as disposable, passive, as well as utilitarian. The female characters being submissive serve nothing in the novel other than an active channel for their male counterparts. This kind of treatment women get in the story teaches a lesson to the male actor. The female characters in the novel are Agatha, Elizabeth, Justine, Safie, and Margaret. An example of female character mistreatment is the framing of Justine for the death of William Frankenstein. Despite being innocent, her gender betrays her and therefore framed. Perhaps the most critical emotional channel in the novel is Frankenstein’s betrothed Elizabeth. Described as a passive, gentle character from the beginning, Elizabeth has always been a soft spot for her fiancé. Frankenstein views her as a possession: “I looked upon Elizabeth as mine - mine to protect, love and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own”.

Unfortunately, he absorbs none of their parental talent or compassion. When Victor creates the hideous Monster, he abandons the Monster and essentially abandons the world on which the Monster is unleashed. Victor's failure as a father to the Monster is the second link in the chain of death swung by the Monster at William, Clerval, Elizabeth, and by default, Justine.

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had been raised by strong women’s rights advocates, which makes her characterization of the women in her story a wildly controversial discussion topic even all these years later. Mary Shelley’s philosopher father paid for her high education, and her mother wrote several works about equality for women. She lived a substantially progressive lifestyle, considering the time period in which she lived. This has raised many questions regarding the weak female characters in her story, due to her own very contrasting beliefs.

In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the reader feels great sympathy for the female characters in the novel. The characters Caroline Beaufort, Elizabeth Lavenza and Justine are characterized as good hearted and upright woman, but nevertheless face an injustice death. In Frankenstein, women in the text are being destructed through an inevitable miserable fate to get the idea of the passive woman that devotes herself to the benefactor and her lack of agency across, in which is demonstrated in the passivity of Caroline, Elizabeth and Justine’s role that leads to their misery.

In Frankenstein, a man arrogantly takes on the responsibility of giving birth, and the female characters pay for his arrogance. How far and in what ways do you agree with this view? It is true that Frankenstein is arrogant – his passion and desire to play god lead him towards creating a being, which he has only made for the creation itself, as the creature has immediately been abandoned afterwards. He does not take on the responsibility of ‘giving birth’ - his lack of judgment on how the creature will finally turn out to look resulted in hatred for himself, which soon turned to be hatred towards the creature. The characters pay with their own death for this throughout the whole novel, as Frankenstein’s disowning of his own creation caused

Many people now still have some stereotypes towards genders. There’s even some very extreme thoughts about it such as men do not need women, they are just toys or tools for men. However, in my opinion, the woman is an important and essential part of men. In the book, Frankenstein, every woman in the book has a great effect on Victor and somewhat determined his fate. Many decisions Victor made is because of Elizabeth, Justine, and Caroline.

As well as a horrific way of creating life, Mary Shelley brought a new subject to the table in Frankenstein-- Feminism. Throughout the novel, the author characterizes each female as passive, disposable, and serving as a utilizing function for the male character. The events that happen to them are generally minor and are used to teach the male characters some sort of lesson or spark an emotion with them. During the period that Shelley wrote Frankenstein, it was very common to see women discarded, objectified, and abused. It is clear that this is reflected in her novel, given the use of her female characters.

All of the female characters that appear in Frankenstein exhibit minimal feeling and often remain incredibly passive. A flaw of women in the novel revolves around the fact that Mary Shelley, the author of the novel, was a feminist and came from a mother that fought for the rights of women. The role of woman as a mother gets taken completely

The novel Frankenstein is written by author Mary Shelley which begins with the journey of captain Walton who is the narrator in the first phase of the story. As a captain, he was traveling towards the North Pole for his research when he rescues Victor Frankenstein who was in frozen condition. He found a great companion for his journey when he needed one the most. In the text, Victor creates a monster and becomes his mother. The novel is divided into parts where Victor narrates his life from his birth to how he made a monster which backfired his life.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a very important novel when it comes to looking at science fiction; her story has been so successful that it is hard to fine someone that does not know about Frankenstein. Even if they have never read her book the idea of Frankenstein has become a household name. Because of this it is very interesting to understand how such an influential book has portrayed the female character and what the book says about females in society. Depending upon how one looks at the novel Frankenstein can be have a very interesting take on the role of men and women in how they shape one another, how men shape women’s lives and if the novel it self can be called a feminist text.

Framed in the tradition of gothic novels, Frankenstein published by Mary Shelly in 1818, explores different themes such as the morality of science, creation and destruction of life, and the differences in gender roles within society. The fact that the author of the novel is a woman infers that it’s told from the lens of gender and that one sex might see things the other may not. Mary Shelly, the author, was the daughter of a dedicated, strong, leading feminist during the Romantic era, Mary Wollstonecraft. With that being said it is hard to image the exclusion of leading female roles in the novel from the author. In developing plot women are portrayed as passive, disposable and servants of a pragmatic function in society.

In Frankenstein, women do not have a major role in the plot of the book, often shown as kind and compassionate, but whose stories never get explored. The roles of the women only ever get exploited to extract emotional reactions out of the central male figures of the story. The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, grew up the daughter of the famous feminist writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, who composed the controversial Vindication of the Rights of Women, demanding equality for women. (Women in Frankenstein) While some critics lament the lack of a strong female role, evidence does exist that Frankenstein has strong feminist themes.