Sexism In Frankenstein

The time has come for the students at Saltillo High School to wave goodbye to their principal. In a short amount of time, Mr. Devaughn will retire and leave the student body to wonder who will lead them next. Now students must consider their expectations of how a principal should carry out their job. The school board should take into account these expectations when choosing who they wish to represent the school. After much thought, the students of Saltillo High School have decided that they need a principal who can create a good school community, discipline the students, and act fairly.

Unequivocally within the ground-breaking gothic novel Frankenstein Mary Shelley calls upon her reader to feel a strong sense of sympathy for the creature dubbed a ‘monster’. Through depicting the creature as innately human through his desire for relationship and the challenges he faces at the hands of the prejudged enlightenment society he is brought into Shelley elicits sympathy from his situation. Ultimately however, the audience’s sympathies lie with neither Frankenstein nor his creation but rather it is those silenced within society, that Shelley depicts through the notable absence of the female gender that are portrayed as being most deserving of sympathy.

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.

In “Frankenstein”, Shelly introduces the character Elizabeth as a love interest and a trophy wife for Victor. Elizabeth’s purpose lies in the duties of

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

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 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

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.

Today, the U.S contains five percent of the world 's population and it holds twenty-five percent of the world 's prisoners. Approximately one out of every four prisoners on the planet is in a U.S prison. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) makes over 30,000 arrests each year related to the sales and distribution of illegal narcotics. In 1986 the Anti-Drug Abuse act set the 5 and 50 gram quantities for crack cocaine which triggered the five and ten year mandatory minimum jail sentence for crack cocaine. This created a conflict with the ratio from crack to powder cocaine because it was 100:1 meaning a person caught with crack cocaine would be more likely to serve longer jail time than a person caught with powder cocaine. The unfair ratio would get a person caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine the same amount of jail time as a person who is caught with 28 grams of powder cocaine. An issue seen around the country is that people of minority are treated unfair under the law. Not only are people being treated unequally under the law but we are adding to the issue of mass incarceration. The Fair Sentencing Act, which will reduce the amount of people who are sentenced to prison for crack and powder cocaine is beneficial because prisons have become so overcrowded and so many people have been sentenced to jail unfairly and are serving ridiculous sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Another representation of women as powerless is the creation and destruction of the female monster. Victor agrees to the monster’s request to create a female mate; he begins creating her and when he is halfway done, he destroys the creature out of fear that she might become more evil. In fact, “…she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” (Shelley 158). He then destroys the female creature, breaking his promise to the monster.

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

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).

The Colosseum is an example of one of the first sports stadiums. It was built for the pure entertainment of the crowd. It has been around since 80AD and it could hold 60,000 people inside. The Colosseum has been able to withstand the forces of nature and the forces of humans such as thieves and vandals and has lasted over thousands of years. This proves that the Colosseum is a wonder that will last for many years to come which means many generations will be able to enjoy it, thus I believe it should be one of the 7 wonders.

Elizabeth is the light of the house and had a close relationship with Victor- they were the soul mates that Caroline imagined (Shelley 18, 24). Elizabeth’s care for others led to a boldness that was short lived due to men’s decisions. This was seen when Elizabeth was at the trial as a witness to defend and humanize Justine against the accusation that she murdered William. However, the public’s “indignation was turned with renewed violence” and Justine was proven guilty due to irrefutable evidence and she confessed a lie to lessen the punishment, but to no avail since it sunk her lower and sentenced her death (Shelley 57-8). The only person or better yet, the only male that could have freed Justine was Victor. But, he thought that he would be seen as an insane person and so he said nothing. Elizabeth and Justine are helpless and voiceless since they are women. The constant romanticizing of the beauty of women contrasts the ugliness and separateness of the creature or in general, the outcasts. Near the end of the novel, Elizabeth was strangled by the creature since the he knew that she was the special and beautiful wife of Victor. Revenge by male figures both monster and man led to the death of Justine and Elizabeth- women that possessed no danger or hate. Safie wanted freedom and the love of her life, by disobeying and escaping her tyrannical father to Felix’s cottage (Shelley 87-90). This proves how a brave woman was able to break the passive attitude and succeed by being with Felix which is the only woman able to do that in the novel. These are the doomed fate of the majority of the women figures due to the male actions except for the rare case of

The women in Frankenstein are forced to be submissive. Victor treats Elizabeth more like a possession or object instead of a living, breathing human being. Elizabeth is passive around Victor. She and other women of the novel, are accepting of the male-controlled society being the powerful figure because that is what they were raised to follow (Kolker). Men withdraw the women of their rights thus the women are forced to act well-mannered. “Like Elizabeth’s destruction, the monsterette’s creation and destruction dramatize how women do not function in their own right but rather as signs and conduits for men’s relations with other men” (Smith 323). Elizabeth possesses herself as being quiet and calm. This quiet behavior adds to the fact that she is a possession and not an individual. “All praises bestowed on her, I received as made to a possession of my own” (Shelly 44).