Essay On Mary Shelley's Representation Of Family

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, lived in a time period of great inequality between men and women where women were restricted in their roles and rights. During Justine’s trial, Shelley not only strives to argue against male dominance in society but also to elucidate irony in the subjection of women through overemphasis on male power over women. Shelley uses abstract diction to show Justine’s presumed guilt and inability to defend herself against her accusers because of her class and gender and also makes a combined emotional and ethical appeal that pokes at women’s gullibility. She also juxtaposes Justine’s innocence and Victor’s guilt in order to accentuate how Victor, a man, negatively influenced the outcome of Justine’s trial. By creating

Paragraph 1: Throughout Frankenstein, it is a common motif for women with a lesser social power to be vulnerable to men. This is exemplified many times through many women but more prominently through Elizabeth and Caroline of the Frankenstein family. Caroline Frankenstein (nee Beaufort) was said to have, “a small sum of money,” deeming her as a woman with very little societal power. After her, “died in her arms,” she was in an extremely vulnerable state and would have been forced to be, “an orphan and a beggar,” (Shelley 20) if she hadn’t committed herself to the care of Alphonse Frankenstein, a rich friend of her father. It can be interpreted that Caroline’s vulnerability was the cause of her marriage to the

The role of the child throughout Frankenstein are primarily focused upon by Walton, Frankenstein, Elizabeth, William and the monster. They all resemble in some cases Shelley’s own childhood, from her independent study to the expectation put on her as a girl. There are resembles aspects of her lost children, through understanding William and the monster. Each character characteristics of childhood differ to resemble a number of 19th century aspects of theoretical and social understandings. Walton’s description of his small sample of childhood reveals his low educational background and a somewhat rebellious nature that resists his sister foreboding fear. Both Frankenstein and Elizabeth’s childhood was primarily principled by the educational theories

Human are the most social animals in the world. When becoming isolated, it a signal that emotions have been turned amongst ourselves. If not already there, it is normal to feel depressed, lonely, alone. In Mary Shelley's gothic novel, both the monster and Frankenstein are isolated. Frankenstein will not tell anyone about his creation because he has no one to pour his emotions out to. This causes the loss of his family, friends,and lover. Until the end, he tells his experience to the force but was never really believed so his tale is only really heard by Robert Walton, an explorer with ambitions as strong as Victor himself. In Shelley's novel, she characterizes Victor Frankenstein and the monster as being isolated to convey their misery.

A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques.  Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love.  To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”.  Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility.  Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was raised by a single parent, her father William Godwin. She acknowledges the mentally stimulating role a father plays in the development of a daughter, presumably speaking from personal experience. She declares, "There is a peculiarity in the education of a daughter, brought up by a father only, which tends to develop early a thousand of those portions of mind, which are folded up” (Veeder). Shelley offers in Frankenstein a portrait of how children’s minds are shape, and ultimately their fates sealed, due to influences from their fathers. Alphonse, Victor’s father, made mistakes in his parenting that negatively shaped the development of Victor’s mind and how he treated other living things.

The narrative about Frankenstein provides a suitable lesson about family structure requirements for the development of sensibility. The monster makes a series of discoveries about family structure through several studies of how families work and coordinate. Familial hierarchy is one of the most important lessons learned from the narrative. Which is attained by the monster when he begins to understand how the old blind man in the family cottage is the patriarch of the family. Ideally, the monster lacks a father figure in its life and resolved to consider the old man as a surrogate parent. Another notable aspect of the lesson of a family is subsequent from the way the monster watches the old blind man encourage his children about the matter of life. Education on family structure entails indulgence in inner relationships that existed in the confinement of isolated

In Ellen Moers’ critical essay Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother (1974) on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, she argues that Mary Shelley’s story is greatly influenced by her experience of motherhood. This essay uses the historical approach, biographical, and formalist approach at point. Moers references the cultural context of the novel, Mary Shelley’s experience as a woman and mother and how that influenced her writing, and focuses on the genre of the novel quite a bit.

Father and son relationships are much more complex when observed from a deeper surface. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, two different outlooks on fatherhood can be seen. In some cases, the role of a father-like figure can be unfulfilled, which leaves the child feeling isolated. While on the other hand, there are situations where the father can be seen as being a guide and mentor for the child. McCarthy shows how in a dystopian society; a father provides his son with unconditional love and care. Whereas, Shelley’s work portrays abandonment and lack of care provided by Victor for the creature. Through these two texts the father and son relationship is shown to play a prominent role in them, but two different

“Mary Shelley, dramatizes a crisis not only of biological reproduction, but also of tropological reproduction, in that the text replicates versions of eighteenth-century epistemology in order to narrate an allegory about the dangers inherent in reduplication such epistemology actually provides crucial intertextual support for the lengthy anecdote in which the Monster recounts his own sociolinguistic development” (Bok 1992 415)

American Romanticism brought a new era to America and American literature. Within literature of the Romanticism era came the development of the gothic novel. Edger Allen Poe is one of the well-known gothic authors which arose from this era. Throughout Poe’s career he wrote many short stories following one theory which he created - that every aspect of a short story should lead to one single effect. For Poe many of his stories have the single effect of terror. In Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” he creates the single effect of terror through his description of the house, the entombment of Madeline, and Madeline’s appearance at the end of the story.

In the words of literary critic Mikyung Park, Shelley “is compassionate toward the monster while criticizing as monstrous the brutal circumstances that cause the creature to be neglected and driven to violence... she describes it in a sympathetic tone”. The early 19th century was a time of great misogyny. Gender inequality was present in nearly all aspects of life on a social, political, religious, and familial level.

In conjunction with her political ideologies, Shelley used her personal economic hardships as basis for the actions of the Frankenstein family, showing sympathy towards the victims of debt and poverty. Mary Shelley was raised by her father who was always deeply in debt, and the threat of a debtor’s prison persisted even after marriage to the point where they had to flee Britain. This parallels the story of Beaufort in the beginning of the novel: “One of his friends...assistance” (Volume I, Chapter I, p 33, 35). Because of her own struggles with debt, Shelley may have been sympathetic to those in similar circumstances, shown in the grief that the frankenstein family felt when their close friend was suffering through economic hardships. Through historical accounts, literary criticisms and in-text analyses it can be concluded that Frankenstein was much more than a just a fantastical story; it was a commentary on mass revolution, social injustice, and a memento of Shelley’s own life

The gothic fictions “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” approach the importance of a parent role and the effect of such role on the child’s life. In Mary Shelley’s novel, she uses Victors past and present to demonstrate how the poor treatment from his parents lead him to poorly fathering his own child. In contrast, James’ takes the approach of showing parenting in a more overbearing and overexerted way, in demonstrating the relationship between the governess and the children and as their guardian how she seeks to protect them from all danger. This essay will look at these two works and how critics have interpreted this theme to view the similarities in the effects of certain parenting and the differences that led to these outcomes. In looking at the main characters of both narratives and their approach with their children it is possible to see how there must be a balance in the presence and absence of parental figure in the developmental period of a child or creature’s life. Moreover, if such balance cannot be attained this could be the leading factor to the detrimental downfalls of the families in these novels.

    The creature's ambiguous humanity has long puzzled readers of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In this essay I will focus on how Frankenstein can be used to explore two philosophical topics, social contract theory, and gender roles, in light of ideas from Shelley's two philosophical parents, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft.