Femininity In 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.

This idea of the female role is reinforced by the fact that as the novel progresses, the women are slowly being removed- first his Mother, then Justine and then Elizabeth- “I saw Elizabeth…held the corpse of my dead mother”. This presents Frankenstein’s mental degregation and ultimately, the ctalyst for the mosntrous act- so Shelley presents the idea of a dichotomy between man and women- Darwin supported this by suggesting the hierachy of reproducion- man and woman is better than man alone.

One such aspect of Shelley’s life portrayed in the novel was the role of women in society. In general, the predominant contenders in literature in the Romantic era were men. Mary Shelley, who was tutored by her father, had to publish her novel anonymously because it would not have been accepted otherwise. In Romantic literature, women were depicted as passive with a sense for nature and intuition. This can be seen in Frankenstein during Victor’s description of Elizabeth Lavenza: “While I admired...pretension” (Volume I, Chapter I, p 39). This quote can be viewed as an oppression of women due to the patriarchal structure of the language, as well as an emphasis on the nature of women. Mary Shelley also criticizes this oppression, but does not criticize overtly. This may be due to the fact that Shelley read her mother’s works as a child, and was influenced by the pro-feminist ideals that her mother advocated for. In addition, Frankenstein, at its core, is an expression of Shelley’s political viewpoints. The years 1811 to 1817 were ones of severe deprivation and hardship for the new working class created by the Industrial

137) Like Elizabeth, Victor already decides the female monster’s fate. This is a reoccurring theme or a motif in Shelly’s novel. Men repeatedly decide women’s fates and the women are left to accept these decisions without any objection. In conclusion, the female characters fulfill the object role in this novel.

Throughout the book, Frankenstein, the reader can see that there is a prominent gender bias throughout the entire text. Although this doesn’t jump out to all, it is easy to see when conducting an analysis of the text. The reader can see this through the creation of life without a female partner, and the fact that Victor fails to protect his spouse on the night of their wedding as well as the fact that Victor ends up destroying the female partner that he has created for the creature.

Despite the creature’s account that he was initially benevolent, kind and timid, Victor is convinced that if women gained the same knowledge as the creature did, she would be uncontrollable and make her own decision. Shelley enforces the idea that women are usually stigmatized as to have the tendency of being mentally disturbed, thus will make the world goes haywire.

Women in the 18th century were often referred to as “ weak, illogical, timid, or even emotionless” ( Radek-Hill, “ Women in Literature”). This idea of women will stick around all the way until the mid 1900s, and has played a big historical issue for decades. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the idea of women being inferior to men is shown in many ways and covers throughout the book. One way she shows feminism is how she constructed the book to where the women in the book play a significantly lesser role than men. Victor Frankenstein, and his monster are the two big roles in the book, leaving little light for the female characters. When you analyze the male characters, you will notice that their actions throughout the book lead to the death and suffering of a female character. Victor is the most to blame for this because he did not speak up about his monsters creation, who in

In the novel Frankenstein, all of the women characters were depicted as the submissive sex. Marry characterizes them as passive, expendable, and serving no meaningful purpose.

Men lead intellectually satisfying lives with little emotion while women lived the opposite. They had emotionally exciting lives with little intellectual fulfillment. Victor excelled in the public sphere but could not perform in the private sphere because according to Mellor the “sexual division of labor” does not allow women or men to have both. Mellor then points out the absence of a strong willed female character. The De Lacey family was seen as an alternative to the Frankenstein family, but even they, a family based on “justice, gender equality, and mutual affection” lack a mother figure. The monster goes to Victor longing for this strong female companion but it does not exist. Mellor also explores the idea that Victor’s most passionate relationships are with men. He saw Clerval as “his former self” and Mellor describes Walton’s responses to Victor as “homoerotic.” Finally Mellor claims that Victor “rapes” nature in the destruction of an equal companion for Frankenstein and is punished “with the very electricity he has stolen.” Also with the death of Elizabeth taking away Victors ability to reproduce Mellor claims that Marry Shelley’s novel portrays the “penalty of raping

In addition to her proposition that a patriarchal society will ultimately lead to chaos, Shelley uses the character of Frankenstein to illustrate that men are not the strong leaders of society they claim to be. Frankenstein is brave enough to go as far as creating life without a woman; however, as soon as his brainchild comes to life, Frankenstein essentially

Upon further probing, there is perhaps a deeper terror rooted in Frankenstein, which subtly appears to stem his hesitancy at creating not just another monster, but specifically a female monster. Because Victor Frankenstein fears the existence of a female free of restrictions that he cannot impose, he destroys her, thus eliminating the female’s options of becoming either completely feminine through becoming a mother and mate, or totally unfeminine by opting to leave her partner and face the world alone.

In the novel Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley reinforced the role of female nature in a book that is predominantly male-oriented. The female character is an underlying feature throughout the whole novel. For example, when Victor Frankenstein created his Monster from dead body parts, he disregarded the laws of female reproduction. Both Anne K. Mellor and Jonathon Bate argue that Victor defiled the feminine nature when he created his Monster from unnatural means. Mellor argued in her essay, “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein,” that Victor eliminated the necessity to have females at all (355). There will not be a need for females if new beings are created in a laboratory. The disruption of mother nature is one of the novel’s original sins (479). In Bate’s essay, “Frankenstein and the State of Nature,” he argued that Victor Frankenstein broke the balance between female principles of maternity and mother nature (477). Frankenstein broke nature and undermined the role of females. The argument of Mellor was more persuasive than the discussion of Bate because she was able to provide more evidence that Victor Frankenstein dishonored the role of female nature.

Women in Frankenstein are portrayed as passive and are seen to be supporters and nurturers. Victor contemplates creating a companion for his monster because he feels like a man needs a women to care and look after just as the women in his life tried to do with him. The creature is in search for compassion and feels that he will find it with a woman. 2. Victor becomes ill multiple times as following confrontations with his creation. Victor uses his illness to avoid the problems and his creature. Ultimately though, Victor’s illnesses make things worse and have the problems carry on for a while instead of handling the situation. 3. All the monster really needs and wants is attention and affection like any other. The audience of the book can somewhat

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein demonstrates a variety of women from distinct backgrounds where the majority faces a doomed fate due to the patriarchal society. Furthermore, the overall representation of women in Frankenstein is passiveness and submissiveness towards the decision and actions of men; they are portrayed as absent due to their minor roles. The “absence” of women could have been the very reason why there are so many downfalls throughout the novel. The death of Victor’s mother due to scarlet fever, the innocent Justine executed, Elizabeth (the beautiful wife) killed by the creature, proves the powerlessness and the passive nature of women that led to their unfortunate death even though, the only woman, Safie broke the chains of the