Graceful, beautiful, loving, nurturing, subdued, diminished, female. All of these adjectives and more can be applied to some of the more overlooked characters of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The central conflict between Victor Frankenstein and his Creature casts a shadow over other historical and cultural issues at work in the novel particularly that of the treatment of women. Mary Shelly brilliantly includes an examination of their condition through four women that suffer and, in some cases, break free from their oppressive mold imposed on them by their patriarch society regardless of their differences in socio-economic status. The four characters of Justine, Elizabeth, Agatha, and Safie represent four different versions and treatment of women …show more content…
In this opposing view of separate male and female roles, the De Lacey family is “based on justice, equality, and mutual affection” in which “all work is shared equally in an atmosphere of rational companionship, mutual concern, and love” (Mellor p. 358). Agatha De Lacey, the sole female occupant of the De Lacey household alongside her brother Felix and Father, then is treated lovingly and with respect, and she equally shares in the work to be done in the home, garden, as well as helping Felix as needed in tending to the wood supplies, rather than being confined to the home and …show more content…
After her father’s betrayal of Felix and hastily departure, Safie alone devises a plan to travel from Italy to Germany where she has discovered he and his family now resides in exile in order to join them as well as to escape the oppression that faces her in her native land. Though she travels in the company of an attendant, she is soon left alone “unacquainted with the language of the country, and utterly ignorant of the customs of the world” but manages to overcome this obstacle too and arrive safely at the De Lacey’s cottage; A stark contrast to the abilities of Elizabeth whose freedom and journeying depends on the allowance of Victor or his father (Shelley p. 80).
Through these four women, Mary Shelley includes an examination on the treatment of women at the time. Justine is condemned to death because her male prosecutors cannot attest to her or Elizabeth’s feminine testimonies. Elizabeth is treated well but as a doll confined to her playhouse that she may not leave without male approval or supervision. On the other hand, Agatha is respected and treated no differently than her brother Felix within the De Lacey household, and Safie breaks free of the mold completely in taking charge of her own future by journeying to the cottage by her own
“‘As a wife and mother,’ cried Lucie, most earnestly, ‘I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but do use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me as a wife and a mother!’ Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance: ‘The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All of our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression, and neglect of all kinds?”
In James Davis’ literary essay “Frankenstein and the Subversion of the Masculine Voice,” he discusses the oppression of women and the minor roles of females in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. With a feminist perspective, Davis claims, “He [Victor Frankenstein] oppresses female generation of life and of text; he rends apart both the physical and the rhetorical ‘form’ of female creativity. In fact, all three male narrators attempt to subvert the feminine voice, even in those brief moments when they tell the women’s stories” (307). Throughout his essay, Davis demonstrates the underlying message of Shelly’s subversion towards men and the social consequences of misogyny. Davis draws parallels between the three men, Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Victor’s creation, Frankenstein, in which they
Topic: Discuss Elizabeth’s relationship with those she is leaving behind. Humans in a complex society connect to one another for a wide range of intentions. The practice often mock their senses and the significance of the relationships are most real when they separate. In “The Uprooting” by Dorothy Livesay, Elizabeth’s relationship with her friends, her Granny, and Aunt Maudie is show when she is moving from Winnipeg to Toronto. First, Elizabeth barely has connections with her Granny in England.
The community expected women to fit into a specific mold and follow certain rules of society. The concept of Eliza’s freedom was contrasting with what the community excepted from her. According to the community, the women could not risk being caught sneaking around or stealing glances from men. They were expected to be courted get married, and live faithful lives to their husbands.
Love and Responsibility are two complimentary themes which present themselves simultaneously on multiple important occasions throughout Mary Shelly’s: Frankenstein. Responsibility, for the circumstances of this essay, is defined as taking care of one whom does not have the necessary materials or intellect to take care of themselves. Love, subsequently, spawns from these positive relationships. Thus, Mary Shelly combines these two themes to create a super theme of love and family. For instance, when Victor Frankenstein’s mother, Caroline, adopt Elizabeth.
As per usual, advancements in a story are made through various literary elements, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein is of no exception. Though what sets this authors use of these elements apart is the effectiveness in which they are presented in what can be considered a prologue of sorts, the letters. As a foreshadowing to what may occur between characters of differing sexes, gender roles are established. For the development of the a main character, Robert Walton, season (a key factor in character development as discussed in the literary work To Read Like A Professor) is described in thorough detail by non other than Walton himself, as he also goes on to discuss his opinion on it. Gender roles remain an important developmental tool
Riley Dupert Mrs. Peleshi English V 03/07/23 Frankenstein Topic 4 A Lack of Feminism in Frankenstein Frankenstein lacks feminism and female power entirely. Most of the women in the story do not further women’s rights but instead diminish them. Though the story has hardly any female characters, only one stands out. The women in Frankenstein are submissive and adhere to the rule of men over women at that time.
Interestingly enough, the novel resembles Shelley’s own life and can be interpreted as a reflection of her perception of families. Shelley shares many of the same characteristics with most of her characters. As the main character in the novel, Frankenstein’s creature is depicted as “a motherless orphan” who had an “unnatural birth” (Griffith). This correlates with Shelley’s own childhood as she was raised without a mother and her birth was in some ways “unnatural” as mothers are not naturally made to die during childbirth.
One character, Justine, is very passive and used as a device to make Victor feel guilty for creating The Creature; as her major contribution to the plot was The Creature framing her for her brothers death and shortly after, being sentenced to death. Another female character, Safie, is used to teach The Creature how to speak: “My days were spent in close attention…and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian…I could imitate almost every word that was spoken… I also learned the science of letters” (Shelley 106). Even the most prominent female character in the book, Frankenstein's lover and wife, Elizabeth, is killed by The Creature on their wedding night, in order to again make Victor regret creating The Creature, and eventually die of his unhappiness. Mary Shelley's depiction of women might be her indicating the roles of women at the time as inferior, a similar thesis brought about by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication on the Rights of Women.
Victor Frankenstein, who describes his surrounding in great detail, based on physical appearance. Shelley reflects Victor’s judgement on physical representation based on the environment he is in. Using his situation in the cold and treacherous mountains to a negative and almost deathly environment, conicondently the place where he meets and speaks to the monster, and the beauty and calamity of home, a place where Elizabeth is often located. There is a major contrast in how he describes his lover, Elizabeth, and the monster he created, in which he relates their appearance to their innocence or evilness. When speaking about characters like Elizabeth and Justine, Victor often relates their physical appearance to their innocent behaviours.
It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.
For Wittig, sex is also linguistically constructed and thus, she stresses the necessity of rejecting the universalized the grammar of gender that maintains the oppressive system of gender binarism. Referring to the mark of gender in French language, she explains that gender is normalized and naturalized through grammatical norms and thus, the conception of gender can be changed through the grammar that gendered being has recourse to. Accordingly, she puts emphasis on the necessity of creating a new language that rejects both the binary and essentializing grammatical restrictions on gender. In other words, in order to display the discursive practices of the patriarchal language that imposes strict gender categories through binary opposition.
In the year 2016, discrimination has become a big part of our society. With issues such as racism, sexism, and discrimination against the LGBT community, our society needs to learn how to accept people for how they are. There are consequences for people who are narrow-minded may undergo. A big repercussion of this would be not meeting an amazing person just because of how they look or because of what they believe in. Books play a huge role in how people are influenced, and how people determine their own unique beliefs.
In 1880s, women in America were trapped by their family because of the culture that they were living in. They loved their family and husband, but meanwhile, they had hard time suffering in same patterns that women in United States always had. With their limited rights, women hoped liberation from their family because they were entirely complaisant to their husband. Therefore, women were in conflicting directions by two compelling forces, their responsibility and pressure. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen uses metaphors of a doll’s house and irony conversation between Nora and Torvald to emphasize reality versus appearance in order to convey that the Victorian Era women were discriminated because of gender and forced to make irrational decision by inequity society.
In literature, a doppelganger is a device used to shape a protagonist’s double. This double exhibits the ability to impersonate their original, but can also possess different morals and ethics that revolve around bringing a dilemma to the protagonist. The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky uses the idea of a doppelganger when the main character, Golyadkin, finds an exact double of himself upon travel. His double ultimately has a goal of destroying Golyadkin’s reputation because he has the social skills that Golyadkin doesn’t, which creates madness in both characters. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reveals that Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, and his monster each control different aspects that make up one human being.