Role Of Women In Frankenstein

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Hello, my name is Tsion Mesfin and today I will be presenting my IOP on “Viewpoints of women by Dr.Frankenstein and the Monster.” To understand Dr.Frankenstein and the Monster’s outlook on women, we first need to know the role of women in the 1800’s as well as their role in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Women in the early 1800s of Europe had many obligations and very few options. Women were suppressed by the men in their lives. During the time of Frankenstein, women were seen as possessions for men and protected by men. They were only useful when performing their responsibility of being a daughter, sister, mother, and wife. Women’s purpose in life is to find a husband, have children and then spend the rest of their lives taking care of their…show more content…
The novel also has other male characters such as Alphonse Frankenstein (Victor’s father), William and Ernest (Victor’s brothers), Victor’s best friend, Henry Clerval, and the monster that Victor creates, which is also male. Throughout the novel, everything that is spoken by a female is used as a transfer of action for one of the male characters. Initially, it seems as Mary Shelley is demoralizing women by using men as her main focus in the novel. I found this odd as Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is an advocate for women’s rights. But towards the end of the novel, Mary Shelley makes a feminist argument by showing that even though the main characters of the novel are men, it is full of the faults they make and that it is women that are the real backbone of…show more content…
Justine’s character drastically changes from being “clever and gentle and extremely pretty” (70) to a monster in society’s eyes when she is wrongly accused and executed for the murder of William Frankenstein. Justine, much like Elizabeth, could have been saved by Victor but rather states that, “Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster he said I was.” (97). Even though she confessed to a crime that she didn’t commit because she was coerced by man, she accepted her demise stating, "I do not fear to die, that pang is past. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of Heaven!" (98). This is yet another example of the submissive women of this time
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