Women In Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein primarily focuses on Victor and his monster, but women also play a part. There are three major female figures in the novel; the housekeeper for the Frankenstein family: Justine, Victor’s “adopted cousin” and later wife: Elizabeth, and the never completed female monster. To both Victor and the monster woman are desired objects that offer comfort and companionship, but as the novel goes on, women become targets for revenge. This goes to show that the women in Frankenstein prove to be both powerless and powerful when it comes to dealing with the men that surround them.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, lived in a time period of great inequality between men and women where women were restricted in their roles and rights. During Justine’s trial, Shelley not only strives to argue against male dominance in society but also to elucidate irony in the subjection of women through overemphasis on male power over women. Shelley uses abstract diction to show Justine’s presumed guilt and inability to defend herself against her accusers because of her class and gender and also makes a combined emotional and ethical appeal that pokes at women’s gullibility. She also juxtaposes Justine’s innocence and Victor’s guilt in order to accentuate how Victor, a man, negatively influenced the outcome of Justine’s trial. By creating

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 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

     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

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 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, all of the female characters are unassertive. Their personalities are one-dimensional, and they never try to take control of their own situations. This characterization seems antithetical to how Mary Shelley, the daughter of a renowned feminist, and an active feminist herself, usually portrayed females in her works. I will argue that by portraying all of her female characters as weak, Shelley is actually criticizing the gender norms of her society, which exalted the meek and timid housewife. She implies that if women do not play an active control in the lives of their family, conflict, within one’s self and against others, will become a lot more common.

Mauricio Zamora Ms. Joyner English 4 16 December, 2015 “Frankenstein view on women” Women were looked at as a lower class person in society during the 1800s when the novel Frankenstein was taking place in. The three women characters in the novel were brutally killed and were treated badly by the men character. Victor treated Elizabeth as if she was a trophy and she eventually accepted it.

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.

“It strikes many readers of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as curious if not paradoxical that the daughter of so renowned a feminist as Mary Wollstonecraft would write her first novel from the perspectives of three men—with only minimal attention to female characters”(Davis 307). In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, women play only a small role in the actions and events that occur in the book; however, they have the largest impact. The women are critical to the overall plot in this novel not because of their presence in the plot but because of their complete absence throughout the book. Mary Shelly uses Elizabeth Lavenza, the female Frankenstein, and Justine Moritz to portray the feminist society in which they live in. Shelly allows her

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a very important novel when it comes to looking at science fiction; her story has been so successful that it is hard to fine someone that does not know about Frankenstein. Even if they have never read her book the idea of Frankenstein has become a household name. Because of this it is very interesting to understand how such an influential book has portrayed the female character and what the book says about females in society. Depending upon how one looks at the novel Frankenstein can be have a very interesting take on the role of men and women in how they shape one another, how men shape women’s lives and if the novel it self can be called a feminist text.

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.

The novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley reveals how women have lived in a society dominated by males for centuries. In the novel, she demonstrates how opportunities entitled to women were tremendously inadequate in the 1800s. Moreover, Mary Shelley portrays how women are considered to be chattels in society, unlike men who thrive in the same community independently. Also, the novel shows how the male characters are significantly relied upon by females for survival, hence attesting their incapability to support themselves. Furthermore, victimization of the female characters by males is highly evident in the novel, as they accomplish their standard roles established by society. Therefore, this essay paper will discuss the commentary made by Mary Shelley on attitudes towards women during the 1800s as presented through the characters in the novel, Frankenstein.

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

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein has various elements of Feminism in the text. One particular feminist ideals that are present in the text is from the first wave of Feminism, her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Using Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” to illustrate that inequality and oppression and the lack of access to education for women, the essay will not only use the women in the story but also the monster itself to represent women before and after they achieve an education. It will be coherent that Frankenstein’s monster represents women in how education was not easy to come by for women due to the patriarchy, and that the monster in the novel suffered the same fate since it did not have the opportunity to get an