Similarities Between Frankenstein And The Birthmark

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

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

Elizabeth frequently makes sacrifices for the Frankenstein family from early childhood all the way until her death. She assumes the role of womanhood at a young age after Caroline 's death. Rather than living out her days of childhood, she comes almost a mother figure to Victor and his younger brothers. While Victor is allowed to seize opportunities to travel and further his education, Elizabeth instead stays in Geneva (Shelley, 23).

As the perception of women changes constantly, society is the only factor in creating their ideal image. These societal views are the basis of their treatment, with the expectation that it is beneficial for them. However, societal expectations of women in the Elizabethan and Victorian eras severely limit their freedoms and rights. William Shakespeare’s Othello and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein portray most women in their typical roles. Both authors depict the level of injustice in society’s treatment of women through the passivity of women causing their deaths, the silencing of vulnerable women and the portrayal of women as more humane than men.

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.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that was wrote during the 1800s, or other known as the enlightenment era. During this era, the ideas of discovering the natural law of the universe and the thirst for scientific knowledge were being spread all across Europe. Mary Shelley incorporates these ideas with Victor Frankenstein's thirst for dangerous knowledge, and through allusions of Prometheus and the Genesis story. Shelley not only incorporates other supplementary readings into Frankenstein, but uses feminist literary theory as a way to put to life the idea of women’s inferiority to men.

Gender inequality will always affect the portrayal of women in society, the weaker, unnecessary, and other sex. It is not just a subject of the past, and still holds a name in society. However in the olden eras, the way women were treated and looked at was in a much harsher condition. In Shakespeare’s Othello and Shelley’s Frankenstein, women’s roles in the books are solely based on the way they are treated in their time period. The portrayal of women in these books demonstrate that they can never be in the same standing as men and therefore will never have the same respect as them. In both Othello and Frankenstein women are treated as property, used to better men’s social standards, and lack a voice, which demonstrates that in

Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein is about a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein who creates a creature through the studies of science, where Victor abandons the creature leaving him helpless. The creature then realizes that he will never belong within society and curses Victor. Wanting revenge against Victor, he becomes the source of Victor’s misery and sorrow. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” is about a scientist named Aylmer who aims to remove his wife Georgiana's birthmark so that she can be perfect. He labors for days making a perfect antidote for her and ends up killing her because it was too strong. In Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark”, the characters Elizabeth and Georgina represent the women’s roles motif expressing this theme that women’s only purpose is to serve others leading to this interpretation that women are disposable.

The women in Frankenstein are gentle, submissive, one dimensional characters. ● Both Elizabeth and Caroline Beaufort are personified versions of docility, charity, and duty. Not only are they emotional fragile, but they are also physical fragile. ● Similarly, all of the women are maternal figures. When Caroline dies, Elizabeth takes over the responsibility of caring for her family.

Mary Shelley, the writer of Frankenstein glorifies a woman as hope and calls a man as a destroyer. It's clearly to know that Shelley is a woman and she writes about this topic through her viewpoints. She sets the characteristic of Elizabeth characters like an angel who animates and brings the happiness to the family. According to the scene that Victor mentioned about Elizabeth character "The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home." (p.31) it indicates that Shelley wanted to show how the soul of woman can be a hope for the human. In contrast, Shelley appoints Victor as a creator who destroyed feelings and soul of his creature. It signifies that she appreciates the soul of a woman than a man just because she is a woman. So, the bias about the gender of the writer in the novel like this can make it be the greatest novel of all

Whereas Godwin and Wollstonecraft’s work only possess traces of the eternal feminine, Shelley shares Goethe’s fascination with the Gothic and the sublime. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s cousin and fiancée Elizabeth combines Charlotte and Gretchen into one character. Like Charlotte, the deaths of her maternal influences force Elizabeth to become a surrogate mother to her young cousin William. Victor also idealizes Elizabeth in the way Werther worships Charlotte, describing how, “Since the death of her aunt . . . she felt that the most imperious duty of rendering her uncle and cousins happy, had devolved upon her” (2). Here, Elizabeth adheres to Goethe’s vision of the virtuous mother who wholly devotes herself to her children and family. Although Elizabeth possesses Charlotte’s moral purity, her tragic death aligns with Gretchen’s fate. Like Gretchen, Elizabeth fails as a mother when Victor’s monster murders her surrogate son, William. While the monster kills Elizabeth to spite Victor, her death establishes a correlation between her life and status as a mother; if Elizabeth cannot protect or help her children, she possesses no value as an individual. She simply becomes a disposable prop that resolves

The reason why this film was so appealing to an audience in the United States during the early years of the great depression deals with what the monster represented. To an audience, the monster represents themselves and their struggles against wealth capitalists. This is a very Freudian thought because; the fictional tale of Frankenstein might have brought out this uncanny feeling that the story on screen was the story of their situation during the depression. In a sense, audiences of 1931 would have seen the monster as easily identifiable with the working man. By contrast, Dr. Frankenstein could be identified and characterized as the upper class, which creates a sense of class structure in the film.

Elizabeth is the only female character to appear in all three volumes of the novel. She is also the cousin, and wife to Frankenstein’s main character Victor. She embodies every characteristic of femininity and the female gender described by Wollstonecraft. This description of Elizabeth is “She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect.”. (Shelley, Pg. 20) That was Victor’s description of Elizabeth when they were children; she remains that way throughout the entirety of the novel. That quotation easily supports Wollstonecraft’s argument that women are taught from infancy that they are to remain docile. The description describes Elizabeth as being