Female Representation Of Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein Essay

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

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein primarily focuses on Victor and his monster, but women also play a part. There are three major female figures in the novel; the housekeeper for the Frankenstein family: Justine, Victor’s “adopted cousin” and later wife: Elizabeth, and the never completed female monster. To both Victor and the monster woman are desired objects that offer comfort and companionship, but as the novel goes on, women become targets for revenge. This goes to show that the women in Frankenstein prove to be both powerless and powerful when it comes to dealing with the men that surround them.

For centauries, women have been forced to live life in the outskirts of a male dominated society. During the 1800’s, the opportunities for women were extremely limited and Mary Shelly does an excellent job in portraying this in her gothic novel, Frankenstein. Furthermore, in this novel, Mary Shelly shows how society considers women to be possessions rather than independent human beings. In addition, the female characters rely heavily on men for support and survival, thus proving their inability to do it on their own. Lastly, the female characters in this novel are in many ways victimized by the male characters. In conclusion, in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, the female characters always fulfill the limited and archetypical roles that

Like Caroline and Safie, Elizabeth Lavenza’s father causes her unhappiness. However this is drastically confounded by the egotism of Victor Frankenstein who seeks to take on the vitally female role of the creator. Elizabeth is constructed by Shelley as an extremely positive character, whose ‘saintly soul’ shines ‘like a shrine dedicated lamp’ in the Frankenstein’s ‘happy home’. She, like her foster mother Caroline, keeps the family together ‘veiling her grief’ for the benefit of the children. However, when victor attempts to take on the role of a woman and ‘create life’ Shelley shows us that it is an unfortunate masculine characteristic to doom idealism with egotism and the pursuit of glory. Despite his noble goals of ‘unfolding the mysteries of creation’, to confer ‘inesteemable benefit’ on all mankind, Victor’s masculine egotism endures

In “Frankenstein” penned by Mary Shelley, the author depicts the roles of Caroline, Elizabeth, and Justine as passive women by taking action only through the men around them. During the 1820s, when Elizabeth Blackwell saw the deaths of many people on ships being thrown overboard, she became inspired to become a doctor. However, during her time period, women were not allowed to get an education. Finally, Mulan, takes the place of her old father to join the Chinese army, despite her passiveness. A closer look at the roles of Caroline, Elizabeth, Justine, Mulan, and Elizabeth Blackwell reveal a time period where women were treated as objects and followers by men.

The value of something depends entirely on each individual, as nobody can value something completely the same as somebody else. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the author is able to portray how women are valued and the oppression of them through Mr. Frankenstein’s disgust to the “she monster” and treatment of other female characters throughout the novel.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein does not seem like a novel that empowers women. Based on the doormat-esque female characters and entitled male protagonist, one might easily assume that Frankenstein is a typical male-penned, patriarchy-saturated 19th century work. However, when examined with feminist ideals in mind, Shelley’s novel actually makes a progressive argument about the role of women. Though the female characters are certainly lacking in both number and substance, this absence hinders Victor and his goals and does not merely assert that women are useless. In addition, the role of maternity and maternal figures amplifies the meaning of Frankenstein; the creation and caring for of life manifests as an immensely important process with both benefits and consequences, not as merely “women’s work”. Through an analysis of the existing female characters and the lack thereof, as well as by understanding the maternal figures present and how they further the novel, one can see how Shelley’s Frankenstein reveals that feminine roles are necessary for a functional society.

The fight for domination amongst the sexes is a battle as old as civilization, where the ideas of gender hierarchies first began. These conflicts often manifest themselves unwittingly through literature, showing subtle signs of deeper tension that has ensued for centuries. The struggle between masculine and feminine becomes apparent through Frankenstein, a battle that results in the death of the potentially most powerful figure in the book. Frankenstein yields characters motivated by complicated thinking, specifically the title character, Victor Frankenstein. Victor is a brilliant 19th century Swiss scientist who succeeds in generating life with electricity, creating a creature that

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.

Determining the primary role women play in the gothic novel “Frankenstein” creates many ways of thinking. For example, Vanessa D. Dickerson author of “The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” argues that “the females in the novel are quintessentially ambiguous figures: present but absent, morally animate angels, but physically and politically inanimate mortals.” Dickerson discusses exceptional character traits of each woman in the story and provides a very agreeable assertion that the men in the story look to the female characters for help when they are sick at heart or down the drain (Dickerson 80+). Therefore, the primary role of women in the book is acting as a sanctuary for the male characters when the men desire to release their affections and worries.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was a novel written in 1818. One of the first in the Gothic Romance genera, it was both controversial and captivating in its time. It was a top selling book not only because of its dark and twisted plot, controversial ethical issues, or detailed scenery and imagery, but also because of what it offered below the surface. We will analyze some of the deep symbolism and seemingly invisible feminism qualities this book has to offer.

The female characters in Frankenstein represent the treatment of women in the early 1800’s. Women who are deprived of their female roles and are enclosed in a feminine sphere of domesticity. In the novel, Frankenstein, the women characters are treated as property and have little privileges in relationship to the male characters, the women suffer and are eventually destroyed showing how unimportant they are in the book’s society, and when it comes to reproduction of human’s, man thinks it pointless to have women play that role. These attacks on the innocent prove that women are second-rate in the novel.

In this article, Deborah Lindsay Williams, a professor of literature at NYU, offers her researched and credible insight on how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be considered a feminist novel. She starts by explaining how many of her students question how Shelley’s novel can be considered a feminist novel when there are no inspirational or imperative women characters. However, Williams asserts this was a purposeful decision on Shelley’s part, making one part of her novel a commentary on how the lack of women affect the way the the narrative unfolds. To demonstrate her point, Williams considers Victor’s refusal to create a female monster. Ultimately, Williams comes to the conclusion that Victor’s refusal to create the woman creature stems from

In all aspects of nature, the female sex is a crucial part of creation and development of offspring. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores the significance of women to the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein , as he surpasses the woman’s role in the production of life. Besides the major themes of abandonment and loss in the novel Frankenstein, there is an ironic focus on the female role throughout the plot. The disregard of women’s roles in society and by Frankenstein show the importance that these women actually played on his life. Frequently, the passive actions and ideally domestic expressions of women’s actions led to some of the largest events of the novel that affected Victor Frankenstein the greatest. Through three important female

During the nineteenth century, the men were seen as more superior than the woman. Women were shut out of the public sphere unless they were accompanying their husbands or fathers. In the novel, feminism is a crucial aspect that leads to a death of innocent women. Justine was a servant of Frankensteins, who had been accused of murdering Frankenstein's younger brother William. Justine was not given the opportunity to defend herself to be proven innocent of this crime. “I know […] how heavily and fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining it; […] it might have been placed in my pocket. But here I am also checked. I believe that I have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly.” (____?____). The following quote portrays how women were not able to stand up for themselves or express their feelings. Justine knew beforehand that it did not matter what she had to say about this as she would not be listened to. This shows how women during the nineteenth century did not have a voice in society and were forced to accept what they were given without rebuttal. The nineteenth century was tough for women because of childbirth and the mental illnesses that went along with it. The author is an example of a nineteenth-century women who followed the typical standards or went through the same path as a “typical” women during this century. “By nineteenth-century standards, Shelley's female body had pursued an