Comparing the Intelligence of Women in Shelley's Frankenstein and Gould's Women's Brains

Can you imagine Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, the great work of literature, without, for example, such female characters as Mrs. Margaret Saville, Elizabeth Lavenza, and Justine Moritz? In this case the novel will have no meaning. All the women help to develop the plot, and without them Frankenstein will lose its spirit. Although these heroines have a lot in common in their characters: they are all strong-willed, kind, careful, and selfless, at the same time, each of them is unique, and each plays her own role in the novel. Mrs. Margaret Saville is the woman to whom the narrator tells the story. Elizabeth Lavenza is the beloved of Victor Frankenstein. Justine Moritz is the heroine who is accused by mistake of murdering

Parallel to the time-period, Elizabeth seems to exist by and through Victor’s perception of her. She is his property, and he takes her in as gift. He looked at Elizabeth as, “mine- mine to protect, love, and cherish,” (Shelley, 18). It is also interesting to note that her presence in the house

Primarily, male scientists overburdened women peers with household responsibilities, deterring them from absolute concentration on their careers. Moreover, women struggled to concur on their own gender discrimination, bifurcating between traditionalists and the so-called “revolutionaries” fighting for equality. Finally, with organized societies recalcitrant to accept women, female scientists relied on their husbands to legitimize their work, furthering the illusion of dependence.The marginalization of women and their eventual break through to the intrinsic discrimination harkens immense similarity to the 1920’s Suffragette movement. While women struggled to prove themselves as full citizens, capable and fully redeemable of choosing leaders, men continued to disseminate lies and vicious vitriol to prevent this inalienable right. Eventually, despite discrimination across all platforms, women through their tireless efforts were able to prove that the mind, the soul, and the spirit are

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was published in 1818. Her parent had undoubtedly influenced her ways of writing. Her father, William Godwin is famous with his piece “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice while her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” is two prominent radical writers who call for reform during French Revolution. Bringing both feminism and radical views from her parents, Shelley critiques women’s weak, docile and uneducated character. She also shows how women are often degraded and treated unjustly. The reason she brought the issues forward is to make women realize that they should improve their position and women should not conform to the dogma that they are always weak.

The novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, and the article “Of the Pernicious Effects” by Mary Wollstonecraft, both have relations when regarding the importance of feminism during their time periods. Throughout Shelley’s novel feminism is addressed because she uses female characters to further her plot and display her viewpoints. If Wollstonecraft evaluated the female characters in Shelley’s novel, she would realize that Elizabeth, Justine, and Safie all show an importance to the flow of the novel and the purpose of equality that Shelley is sending about feminism through these characters.

In the 18th century, a woman by the name of Mary Wollstonecraft became one of the first great proponents of feminism, a movement that promoted the rights and abilities of women. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, feminism was still on the rise. The movement spawned a generation of great women, and thus, many interesting sayings. In Frankenstein, a book written by Mary Shelley, who happens to be Wollstonecraft’s daughter, the main character Victor creates a monster that would come to rip his family apart and destroy his life. But if one key thing had changed, his downfall would have never happened. When thinking of this book, one specific saying from this era of feminism comes to mind; “behind every great man is a great women”. The lack of prominent and influential women in Victor Frankenstein 's life is what ultimately leads to his undoing.

As an anthropologist, it was Broca’s job to study the human species. He collected information for years trying to answer the questions on everyone's mind in the 1800’s, what gender is smarter, therefore superior? Broca studied brain sizes to answer that question do to the fact that humans were declared the smartest species because we have bigger brains than animals. Broca declared that women “had smaller brains than men and, therefore, could not equal them in intelligence,” however, I would like to argue that. According to Women's Brains By Stephen Jay Gould, Broca’’s data was inconsistent. He used 292 male brains but only 140 female brains. He did not take in consideration weight, heath, height nor age into his observations, all facts that

Throughout the history of this country especially beginning in the 1800s with the women's suffrage movement, women have fought for equality. It is no secret that the role of men versus women have change immensely over the last century however some things have not changed. As a result of the unchanging or slowly evolution of equality feminism has arise.

In 1779 Judith Sargent Murray penned a systematic expression of feminist position. Her essay, "ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES," challenged the common misconception that males were more intelligent than

Society has long since considered women the lessor gender and one of the most highly debated topics in society through the years has been that of women’s equality. The debates began over the meaning between a man and woman’s morality and a woman’s rights and obligations in society. After the 19th Amendment was sanctioned around 1920, the ball started rolling on women’s suffrage. Modern times have brought about the union of these causes, but due to the differences between the genetic makeup and socio demographics, the battle over women’s equality issue still continues to exist. While men have always held the covenant role of the dominant sex, it was only since the end of the 19th century that the movement for women’s equality and the

Mill makes a very strong argument that the position women have in society is not the only possible way to structure societal hierarchy. The reason it seems unnatural to change its structure, he claims, is because it is uncustomary.

In the article Gender Role and Feminism Revisited: A Follow-Up Study, the authors, Elizabeth Suter and Paige Toller, are analyzing societies views on feminism. They first perform surveys, asking people if they would identify themselves as feminist. The results showing that only 16% of the woman and 3% of the men were willing to take on the label of feminist. These results led to the authors wondering what these people thought of feminism.

The horror classic novel Frankenstein has gathered a great deal of critical and commercial attention since first being introduced in 1818, and naturally there has been many academics who have analyzed many of the novel’s biggest themes, symbols, and motifs. This also includes in analyzing the author herself, Mary Shelley. Marcia Aldrich, who has her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington, is one of the academics to underline the role of being a female writer in the 19th century and what importance this plays on the novel Frankenstein. In her article, co-written by Richard Isomaki, “The Woman Writer as Frankenstein” analyzes the significance of Mary Shelley being the daughter of a writer and how this contributed to her writing Frankenstein, which they speculate as her, Mary Shelley, envisioning herself as the Monster. Aldrich and Isomaki’s “The Woman Writer as Frankenstein” makes valid and persuasive points, which effectively argues that the novel is semi-autobiographical in the sense that Mary Shelley pictured her as the Frankenstein Monster, for many of the concerns that the authors bring up in their article highlight the insecurities, doubts, and inexorable frustrations of a young woman writing in the 19th century.

Studies by Broca concluded that, on average, the brain of a women is one hundred and eighty one grams lighter than that of a man, or fourteen percent (Gould, 1978). However, not all researchers are convinced of these findings. Researcher Gould (1978) explains how Broca may not have allowed for variations in height, body shape or degeneration when comparing his measurements. However, Rushton (1997) counters that even Gould’s revision of Broca’s data indicates a difference in relative