Gender Roles In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

He tells Frankenstein that he wishes to have a companion as much deformed as him because he expects no sort affection from human kind. Victor is hesitant to agree to the monster’s terms but he realizes he will cause the devastation of his whole family if he refuses. Victor is indirectly in control of the creature because he does not want anyone else

Victor decides, when he is nearly finished building the second creature, that he does not actually want the two creatures to run off and be happy. At least, that was the reason Victor gave, but his ulterior motive for destroying the female creature was actually to keep the original male creature all for himself. Victor understands that if he were to obey the creature and create it a spouse he may never see the creature and live out his sexual fantasies with it. However, Victor’s dream of loving the creature sexually is impractical because the creature is clearly

Victor is also a villain in a Archetype sense. Victor was trying to play god, when he created the creature, and that is something he shouldn't have done, because humans can't become too powerful, even though they always try. Victor became so obsessed with creating life, that it clouded his judgment, and took up all of his time and energy. On page 66, just before Justine's trial, Victor thought to himself, "During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. It was to be whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow beings." This line shows two things, first Victor knew that Justine, and William's death was his fault. Also, he knew that his experiments, shouldn't have been done, and were against the laws of nature and god. On page 39, Victor says, "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." This quote shows how Victor wanted to be like a god. He wanted to be admired, and praised as a species creator. And this want is another reason he was the real villain of Frankenstein.

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

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

There are a number of female characters introduced in the novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus; however, all of them are depicted as passive, submissive, and docile characters rather than being equal to men. They are represented as the counterpart to male characters, and thus, mirroring the typical characteristics of women of the 18th century. Women are categorized as the weaker sex who needs protection by the stronger, male counterpart. Moreover, female characters in this particular work of fiction are seen as disposable objects – treated as properties of men as the consequence.

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

They are also seen as the relief for male’s craziness. Through Shelley portrays them as an understatement of what they are capable of, only the beginning of feminism is forming in this century. Frankenstein is the source of a new reality to women. A novel portraying them as this helpless opens up one’s eyes to protest of a new and brighter future for gender equality. Feminism is not necessarily presented in Mary Shelley’s novel yet its anti-version makes women want to fight for their

In the beginning of Frankenstein, Victor´s begin on a quest to discover how to prolong life, which sounds reasonable in theory. He was at fault though for rushing in headfirst to the process of creation, he did not consult any of his peers or professors about what the implications of such an event might bring to the world. He did not prepare for having another life in his hands when the creation would be complete. All that Victor saw was the attention he would garner from succeeding at his experiment, not how the result would pan out. This comes to light when the creation process is finished and the Creation rises. Victor did not try to interact with his work, instead he immediately acts with disgust and fear. If he had been thinking about what the result would entail, he would have known that a body made of human corpses would not be attractive to the human eye, and that the body would be of larger stature. Victor hurries out of his lab, hoping to never see the Creation again. How could he immediately abandon the life that he had just brought into the world, leaving the Creation to basically die? The face of horror and subsequent fleeing immediately made the Creation feel he was at the wrong, when he did not ask to be brought to life, nor did he attack Victor in any way.

This time Victor allows the creature to approach him. After some time the creature demands a female companion and it is only with pity and much argumentation that Victor consents. While the creature watches, Victor begins working on the female monster and then he destroys it. Victor, by doing this, is ignoring the creature's feelings and breaking his promise. Therefore, Victor Frankenstein, after much hard work, rejects his own creation due to its monstrosity.

The time period which the book is written, many perceptions in between men and women as a utilitarian society arise. Mary Shelley expresses the unequal, yet made to seem inertial distribution of power and ranking solely into the hands of men in Frankenstein. Frankenstein was published in 1818 and really shows the power struggles between genders. The power, and lack of between men and women in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein serves as the truth in identifying the trends of women being placed under a stereotypes, which makes most female characters unable to properly demonstrate their inner selves. There have been many scenarios in which the female characters of the novel are viewed in lesser light than men.

The creation exclaims to Victor’s dead body, “If thou wert yet alive, and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction”(161). If Victor continued to live and seek revenge upon the creation, he would be able to live as long as he would get to watch Victor continue to suffer. However, as Victor is now dead, there is nothing to seek retribution for, and instead, all his feelings of isolation and anguish return to the creation’s mind, as there are no other emotions to blind him from his true feelings: he is truly and utterly alone. This causes the creation to go on and say, “But soon… I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt”(161). Without the existence of Frankenstein, he sees no point in living, and would much rather join Victor in death rather than face his own agony and isolation on Earth. Neither Victor nor his creation win in the battle of revenge they sought out against one another; in the end, they both die losers, without having what they truly needed to be satiated: companions. In making both characters losers, Mary Shelley explains the perils of revenge, and how it never truly one’s desire, but rather a way to compensate for failure to obtain one’s true desires. Revenge blinds the true motivations of one, and even when they achieve the highest form of vengeance, their souls continue to thirst for other

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a horrific novel that avoids strong and independent female leads. It is hard to believe the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, an important feminist, could write such a thing. Within Frankenstein, it seems as if Mary Shelley is demoralizing women by keeping them fairly absent and focusing upon men in the novel (Behrendt 1). Shelley acts against women by making the three main narrators of Frankenstein men. Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster all narrate this haunting tale. However, these central characterized men make plentiful mistakes throughout society. One may think, therefore, that Shelley’s treatment of Dr. Frankenstein and Walton actually acts as a female critique of male ambition since the characters both possess an insensitivity that leads to their downfall (Aldrich and Isomaki 3). Perhaps, in her novel, Shelley is actually showing how women are instead a backbone to society. Mary Shelley makes a truly feminist point within her well-known literary classic, Frankenstein.

It was made out of many dead bodies which made it look ugly. When Victor saw the creature alive in front of him, he was scared by the thought of what he ended up with. Frankenstein’s monster is like a new-born baby. It did not know how to speak or cope up with the world. When Victor turned his back on the monster, it felt betrayed. It did not get the love and support it should’ve been given. Also, when the world was reluctant to accept the creature even after it helped them, it started harming the people who hurt him. It felt lonely as it was not taken care of by the only father figure he had, Victor himself. The monster told Victor, “You had made me, but why had you not looked after me, and saved me from this pain and unhappiness?” (Page 30) This showed how much deprived of happiness the monster was, which made him take revenge from Frankenstein.

On the other hand, Mary Shelley also highly supports the need for increased femininity in the world, shown through the inclusion of Henry, the female monster, and even through the absence of female characters. Miller described femininity as a personality trait, not just a characteristic confined to females or males. Henry personifies femininity and supports Miller’s explanation that femininity is not just for women. Henry, “deeply read books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs...and was so full of kindness and tenderness” (39/40). He is focused on experiences, like travelling through Europe and learning Oriental languages, while Victor is focused on chasing his creature. Although Henry comes to a tragic end, his life is much happier than Victor’s because he did not confine his life to fixating exclusively on results. Shelley also confirms that the world demands increased femininity by adding the possibility of a female creature. Victor creating her mirrors injecting greater femininity into the world. He created the original creature by himself and after seeing the damage he caused, agreed to make him a female partner; “After a long pause of reflection, I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow