Frankenstein Essay

Several fields have studied the relationship between creator and creation. The most significant aspect of this research considers the difference between nature and nurture. Sociologists, psychologists, scientists, and other professionals have tried to pin down the exact distinctions between these two types of upbringings. In literature, the same questions have been asked and studied using fictional characters, most famously in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in 1667, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in 1818. The complexity of the characters in these texts creates the theme of nature versus nurture before they diverge and arrive at differing conclusions.

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

     There are many different themes expressed in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. They vary with each reader but basically never change. These themes deal with the education that each character posses, the relationships formed or not formed in the novel, and the responsibility for ones own actions. This novel even with the age still has ideas that can be reasoned with even today.

throughout this novel and the movie. The decline is a less gradual one in the novel but a

In Anne Mellor’s article “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein,” she focuses on the role that women play in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mellor explores the patriarchal society by providing evidence for the claim that Frankenstein is a feminist work. Mellor argues that Victor Frankenstein’s downfall is due to his fear of femininity and his need to become the creator of a human being. She begins the article with the argument that the division of spheres (public and private) within the book caused the destruction of many women. Mellor then explored the spheres that men and women occupied. Men would “work outside of the home” while women were “confined to the home”. This division of spheres had negative consequences as much for men as they did for

Mary Shelley presents Victor engaging with Elizabeth in all social female roles: wife, mother, and sister.  He is also presented as engaging with her body in all possible variations, creating her body through

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 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shelley characterizes the female characters as passive, disposable and serving an utilitarian function. Women such as Safie, Elizabeth, Justine, Margaret and Agatha provide nothing more but a channel of action for the male characters throughout the novel. Meaning, the events and actions acted by them or happen to them are usually for the sake of the male character gaining new knowledge or sparking an emotion. But, at the same time, the main male character, Victor Frankenstein, only adds to the the gendered construction of Shelley’s world instead of dismantling it. Fueled by their primary use of plot progression, otherwise meaningless characters are put to good use in Shelley’s Frankenstein.

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 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.

In the book Frankenstein the Gothic novel included many characteristics to describe women such as love, disappointment, and horror Frankenstein” the author offers a different point of view for women in their family and social roles. The women in Frankenstein did not have many opportunities for them to explore and find themselves. Many women lived in the cycle of taking care of their family, staying home, and being a good wife. Women were treated more like property with minimal rights. Women in Frankenstein were brutally murdered and treated as somebody who was poor.

While the story of a monstrous creature and its egomaniac-turned-paranoid-mess of a creator does not seem like a novel which would be rooted in feminism. Nonetheless, within Frankenstein there are implicit, yet undeniable parallels to Vindication of the Rights of Women: the most famous work of devout feminist, and mother of Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Though she died due to complications during Mary’s birth, it is well known that Wollstonecraft, and the ideas of the Romantic Era, were influential figures in her daughter’s writing (Deter). Allusion to Vindication of the Rights of Women is generally manifested in Frankenstein in three general ways. First, and most easily identifiable, are the circumstances surrounding Victor’s mother and her death. Next, is the characterization behind several of the female characters in the book, especially their deaths. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, is the proposition that Victor and his creature represent the most undesirable qualities of men- and the novel exists as a critique of men and their selfish desires.

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

when he felt lonely and when he was hungry there was no one to guide