Frankenstein: The Role Of Females In The 19th Century

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Females in the 19th Century By accentuating the female’s roles and responsibilities in the 19th century, the women’s roles and responsibilities were completely different and often unequal to the men’s roles, yet the women in Frankenstein influenced the lives of the male characters in a positive way. In addition, some women in Frankenstein are taken advantage of and used since several female characters felt they were not worthy and died because they stayed quiet at times when they should of spoke up. Mary Shelley emphasizes females as domestic and explains her story from a feminist viewpoint by showing how females in Frankenstein were created from actual people in her life. Caroline Frankenstein’s death causes Victor’s health to decline because with her death comes the death of valuable feminine qualities of selflessness in Victor which are replaced by male qualities of selfishness and self-importance. The death of the…show more content…
Eventually, Victor finds Elizabeth "motionless and dead, laid over the bed, her body lifeless, and her pale and distorted face hidden by her hair" (Shelley 140). Elizabeth was not capable of protecting herself without assistance from a male and for that reason she ultimately dies while waiting for Victor to rescue her. Female roles can be seen as an end for people in radicalism. Furthermore, the females are considered domestic because they are constrained to their homes and are kept away from society. The men in the novel, such as Victor and Walton, wander on voyages in pursuit of learning and secretive desires. When reading this novel, many readers will be amazed by a masculine 19th century social norm, where men are part of civilization and the women were bystanders. However, one source says when reading Frankenstein, if the reader uses an unbiased mindset, the reader can learn from both “womanly” and “manly” perspectives (Collings

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