Gender Identity In Frankenstein Essay

In a patriarchal society, men are the decisions makers and holds position of power and prestige. Men in this society are very ambitious and self-determined and want to be known and brought down in history for what they discover or invent. Beginning with an ambitious explorer, to a mad scientist and his creation, all these men will do anything in their power to achieve their goals. In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the quest of pursing goals in a patriarchal society is demonstrated by Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton and The Monster.

In Ellen Moers’ critical essay Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother (1974) on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, she argues that Mary Shelley’s story is greatly influenced by her experience of motherhood. This essay uses the historical approach, biographical, and formalist approach at point. Moers references the cultural context of the novel, Mary Shelley’s experience as a woman and mother and how that influenced her writing, and focuses on the genre of the novel quite a bit.

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

In “Possessing Nature: The Female Frankenstein”, Anne K. Mellor argues that Victor Frankenstein, an anti-feminist, competes with nature when he attempts to make females obsolete by creating a creature outside of natural birth, thus dooming him to endure nature’s vengeance. To exemplify that Frankenstein intends to strip women of their “cultural power”, Mellor establishes the social division between sexes, then goes on to analyze Frankenstein's fear of women, which leads her to note his favor for male relationships, and lastly cover nature’s revenge (1).

Frankenstein; Or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley conveys that stories are dangerous because they impose social norms by enforcing restrictive gender roles that society makes impossible to reconcile. Gender roles dictate the life one should live and one’s value to society, and these restrictions ruin the creature’s life in Frankenstein due to his inability to find a fulfilling role to play in the world he lives. As William Shakespeare once wrote, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (3.6.80); the creature’s inability to find reconciliation between male or female normative roles he learns through stories leads to his ostracization. He recognizes that the world is a story, and yet he is not even offered

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.

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.

The novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, and the article “Of the Pernicious Effects” by Mary Wollstonecraft, both have relations when regarding the importance of feminism during their time periods. Throughout Shelley’s novel feminism is addressed because she uses female characters to further her plot and display her viewpoints. If Wollstonecraft evaluated the female characters in Shelley’s novel, she would realize that Elizabeth, Justine, and Safie all show an importance to the flow of the novel and the purpose of equality that Shelley is sending about feminism through these characters.

What differentiates Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein from the majority of horror novels are the very real and timeless themes it explores.  The overriding theme of the novel - scientific investigation without consideration of morality and responsibility is still an important topic in today’s world.  “Perhaps the reality of cloning and genetic engineering makes this theme more relevant today than when Frankenstein was first published”(Patterson). This theme, along with the more subtle themes of revenge, the inability to accept those who are different, and the inability to control one's destiny are all themes which separate Frankenstein from other novels in the genre.

     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

When reading Frankenstein women roles were to be the nurturer and very yielding not out spoken. To tend to the children and to take care of all that is in the house. This might entail caring for the sick which Caroline, Victors’ mother did for her father way you see this is stated in the book how she “procured plain work; she plaited straw; and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life” (pg.32). With this you see that women earn little wages outside the home. Women were not considered in high standing to make a livable wage. Therefore, marriage was one of their important roles and to bear children. Throughout the book you see how the women are all focus on family and marriage in one passage Elizabeth ask Victor “Answer me, I conjure you, by our mutual happiness, with simple truth-Do you love another?” (pg.187). Here she is showing her commit but wonders if he feels the same way. She also puts no demands on him when addressing this inquiry in her letter. He let her know there is no one else and knows this was his mother dying wish that they should be united in marriage.

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.

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

Although the structure of the novel Frankenstein is focused around male protagonists, Victor Frankenstein and his "progeny," the core ideals of the novel play with the way society views the female sex. Female traces in Frankenstein uncover Mary Shelley’s views of struggles with femininity and sexuality that she perceives from society. The creature of Frankenstein altered into a "monster" because of the absence of a motherhood role in his life. The transformation that makes the creature a “monster” is how Shelley aims to point out the significance of the female role. Frankenstein acts as an analysis of the fears and anxieties of the nineteenth-century woman, which focuses on the misogynist ideals of social structures that give the male sex influence and power. Shelley uses the novel to alert society about the dangers of a maternally absent life, a life that opposes the idea of maternal support in both the home and in society.

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.