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Gender Roles In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Women in the nineteen century were often silenced and placed into stereotypical maternal roles. Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein imagines a world in which female intervention within the creation and the child’s developmental stages is revoked, leaving them with only paternal figures to look to for nurture. Shelley explores the consequences of female exclusion at the hands of science and the repercussions that would bring to society if the scientific theories of the nineteenth century had the opportunity to acquire the genetic female role. Introducing the offspring as a hideous creature that is unable to obtain intimate relationships, Shelley is able to comment on the societal roles of being a female and the pressure that those roles are accompanied by. The consequences …show more content…

Suggesting that women are not merely passive companions to men, but instead have a centralised role in contributing to the security of the established societal structure. The self-centred voice of Victor Frankenstein and the discourse of feminine exclusion within society conveyed through the character of the creature, can represent Shelley’s relationship with the patriarchal culture she was raised in, but also the progressive feminist familial atmosphere in which she had the privilege of growing up.
Mary Shelley developed Frankenstein during the rise of the ‘Age of Enlightenment,’ in which many had emphasised the importance of science and medicine. Historically known as a male-dominated field, Shelley does not insert female characters into scientific character roles, instead leaving their presences purely passive, barely featuring strong, independent female characters and those who are present ironically die by the novel’s culmination. Juxtaposed by the male characters who showcase an obsessive single-mindedness to their goals and detach themselves from domestic matters. Frankenstein reflects the relationship

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