Feminist Themes Throughout Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

     Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s

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.

Over the years, the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has become universally portrayed in one way: a tall, green-skinned, dumb brute with no language or reasoning abilities. Society has turned the story of Frankenstein into a mere horror story, dehumanizing the monster more than was intended in Shelley’s novel. However, the message of Frankenstein is a far cry from the freak show displayed by the media. While many people may only see Frankenstein as a grotesque story meant to thrill its audience, its purpose goes much deeper as it advocates for the equal rights of women in society.

One of the threats of creating a mate for the monster lies in the female’s physical ability to procreate. Victor is afraid that the female and the monster will produce children, with or without his approval. Through her feminine body, the female could unleash "a race of devils … who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror" (Shelley 144). She is the crucial element in naturally bringing about such offspring, for without the female, the monster is rendered impotent, unable to cause any more harm than he alone can inflict. If the female chooses to accept the role as mother and mate, together she and the monster can produce a generation of offspring taught to despise mankind as deeply as their predecessors. Victor recognizes the power the female has over man solely through her ability to bear children, because through this ability the female can do just as Victor does -- create life, naturally

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.

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.

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