Frankenstein is a feminist novel because Mary Shelley advocated the rights of women by acknowledging the problems faced by women through each character. This novel is written in 1818 when people were not aware of these problems. Shelley also created flawless female characters and faulty male characters to show women as victims of men’s decisions. By portraying women as victims, Shelley is suggesting to stop treating women as inferiors and give them equal amount of choices and opportunities as men. Shelley used multiple point of views in the Frankenstein, mainly to show that it is not just one man but the whole society who treats women as inferior. In this essay, both male and female characters will be analyzed using a feminist lens. There were …show more content…
Shelley showed that all men are shallow and they only care about beauty and even if their own creations (children) are not beautiful, they will leave them in the wild. Shelley portrayed the double-standards of the society by showing that a woman is not supposed to leave her ugly creations due to the pressure by society but a man can do whatever he desires. Shelley demonstrated that men are not able to nurture a life like women, even if they are able to give life and this is the reason we need women in a society. The idea is sarcasm by Shelley that even though men are fully capable of taking care of a life, they will not due to their shallow …show more content…
First, the monster killed Victor’s youngest brother, William. William was the only flawless male character showed by Shelley, “very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health” (45). By showing William as flawless, Shelley is suggesting that men are not born faulty but society damages them, relating it back to the theme of novel of nature vs. nurture. In a letter from Victor father, he said, “William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!” (49). Even in this line, Shelley is showing William as perfect and gentle victim of Victor’s evil desire to create the monster. Shelley killed William, a young child character first who according to her was perfect, because she suffered the lost children. The pain can be seen by Shelley’s choice of the word “murdered.” It shows the pain that loss inflicted on the parents since the letter was written by the father of the
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was published in 1818. Her parent had undoubtedly influenced her ways of writing. Her father, William Godwin is famous with his piece “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice while her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” is two prominent radical writers who call for reform during French Revolution. Bringing both feminism and radical views from her parents, Shelley critiques women’s weak, docile and uneducated character. She also shows how women are often degraded and treated unjustly. The reason she brought the issues forward is to make women realize that they should improve their position and women should not conform to the dogma that they are always weak.
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had been raised by strong women’s rights advocates, which makes her characterization of the women in her story a wildly controversial discussion topic even all these years later. Mary Shelley’s philosopher father paid for her high education, and her mother wrote several works about equality for women. She lived a substantially progressive lifestyle, considering the time period in which she lived. This has raised many questions regarding the weak female characters in her story, due to her own very contrasting beliefs.
Mary Shelley makes us question who really the “monster” is. Is it the creature or Victor? While the creature does commit murder, he does not understand the consequences of his actions. He is like an infant who is unfortunately left to learn about the workings of society, and his place in it, on his own. He has no companions and feels a great sense of loneliness and abandonment. The creature voices his frustration and anger and seems to try to project his feelings of guilt onto Victor, as if to show him that he is the ultimate cause of the creature’s misery while he is simply the victim of Victor’s manic impulse. Shelley utilizes words, phrases, and specific tones when the creature vents his misery to Victor and this evokes, amongst the
This is presented through Victor’s initial reaction to the monster, ‘Unable to endure [..] the being I had created, [he] rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing [his] bed-chamber ‘. This emphasises how Victor is immediately overcome with regret for the creation of the monster, and yet does not accept this by ‘traversing [his] bed chamber’ instead of facing his creation. This is furthered by Shelley presenting Victor as saying ‘My ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the murderer of William ‘. This emphasises how Victor did not believe that he was indirectly the ‘murderer of William’. This further highlights how Victor refuses to hold himself accountable for the actions that led him to his
He envied these people most, because they were the perfect beings they did not have his horrific defects. "...from that moment he declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against Frankenstein who had had formed him and sent him forth to this insupportable misery" (Shelley 121). This shows that the monster fought against his label as an outcast. The monster killed William, for something William could not have affected. "...you belong then to my enemy-to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim" (Shelley 150). The monster not only wished to kill Victor for his creation but to kill everyone associated with his eternal enemy. The monster has been pushed so far that he will not give any humans a chance, the same chance he once wanted. The monster is treating William just the way he was treated, with no remorse.
None of Shelley’s female characters in Frankenstein are feminist icons; the women of the novel are written as passive, defined entirely by the men in their lives. This understanding, which informs Stephanie Haddad’s article “Women as the Submissive Sex in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, is partially achieved through point of view, specifically that of
His twisted conception of justice that leads him to frame Justine as the murderer of William. He attacks Justine since she represents what he is forever excluded from: humanity. At the novel’s end, the Creature expresses regret that he has become a monster. As it is his nurture - or rather, his lack of nurture - that has culminated in this calamity, Shelley suggests the danger of Victor’s forbidden command. Knowledge is not meant for one’s own success but for the prosperity of the community.
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein seems to focus on the characterization of men yet what is ironic is the fact that she is a woman. After the birth of Shelley, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft who was one of the first and most important feminist advocates had died, leaving Shelley to continue in her footsteps (“Feminism & Women in Frankenstein”). Growing up, she was exposed to the work done by her mother and this led her to become exposed to feminist ideals at a very early age (“Feminism & Women in Frankenstein”). In Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, it is controversial of why she chose to characterize both sexes in the way she did and this controversy on women’s roles held of one the central themes in the text. Some critics argue that
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is one of the most famous texts in literature, but it holds a much more different message than everyone is used to. When people think Frankenstein, they think “It’s alive!”, those words are never said nor implied in the actual book so it begs the question, what is this book really about? Some would say that it is a piece of literature about a man creating a monster that eventually comes back to haunt him. This may very well be true, but an interesting way to look at this text is through a feminist critical perspective. Specifically, the parent-child conflict that goes on throughout the book between Victor and his monster. Comparing this to the modern feminist allows for a look into Mary Shelley’s mind and what her
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
As well as a horrific way of creating life, Mary Shelley brought a new subject to the table in Frankenstein-- Feminism. Throughout the novel, the author characterizes each female as passive, disposable, and serving as a utility for the male characters. The situations they find themselves in are generally minor and are used to teach the male characters a lesson, or spark an emotion in them. During the period that Shelley wrote Frankenstein, it was very common to see women discarded, objectified, and abused. It is clear that feminism and misogyny are reflected in her novel, given the use of her female characters.
In the novel, after Victor's mother's death, he is overcome with grief and expresses “that the brightness of a beloved eye can have departed forever–that the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed” (Shelley 29). In this event of Victor losing his mother, Shelley incorporated her life events of losing her mother and the grief she felt from this loss into this novel through Victor's situation to add a more emotional and authentic sentiment. Mary Shelley also incorporated the events of her own life into the novel in chapter seven, when Elizabeth finds Williams's body. In this chapter of the novel, Victor's father writes him a letter expressing how Victor's brother William was found murdered in the woods and how his adopted sister Elizabeth blamed herself for Williams's death. In the letter, Victor's father wrote how Elizabeth “examined the neck of the victim, and clasping her hands exclaimed ‘Oh God!
In Mary Shelley’s novel, nature plays a vital role in the development of the plot. Nature is considered a female part because Mother Nature is the collective personification of life. Nature is life-bearing and nurturing, as females are to their offspring. In spite of nature being feminine, Victor
It is up to each reader to take Shelley’s message, but the author emotionally connect these two different perspectives for the audience to see in their own generations how society does
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