The Victorian Women of Shelley's Frankenstein
She is a daughter, a wife, and a mother who faithfully carries out her domestic duty in subservience and passivity. She's a willing sacrifice to her father, her husband, and her children. She's sentimental, meek, and docile in nature. She's also flawless in every physical aspect. She's her superior man's play-thing and possession--she's his to protect and cherish. She is a typical nineteenth-century Victorian woman of England. Such typical images of the Victorian women are clearly and accurately depicted in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through one of the female characters, Elizabeth.
Subservience is one of the main characteristics of Victorian English women. They were "taught to be submissive and manipulative" (Kanner 305). Qualities of "selflessness, patience, and outward obedience" were also "required" in women (Prior 96). In contrast to men's "masculine energy," women were thought to possess "feminine passivity" that made them incapable of actively venturing into the world with curiosity (Kanner 208). Such false belief on the men's part, not women's "feminine passivity," is what hindered the women from venturing into the world and confined them to the home. Such confinement is evident in the following woman's diary:
All this time my Lord was in London where he had all and infinite great resort coming to him. He went much abroa...
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...ence, through the images of Elizabeth, Mary Shelley clearly and accurately depicts attitudes toward Victorian women of nineteenth-century England. Elizabeth lives, and dies, the role both Shelley and society had written for her and her real-life sisters.
Works Cited
Kanner, Barbara, ed. The Women of England: From Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present. Hamden: Archon Books, 1979.
Prior, Mary, ed. Women in English Society, 1500-1900. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. Carol H. Poston. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975.
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...ings by saying that it saved millions of Americans, but I came to find out that, that wasn’t so true. While looking through many articles, books, and databases, I realized that before getting this assignment I only knew the things that were shared with me about this subject. I knew what everyone wanted me to know and I never questioned it. I believed that if our country were to bomb someone, they’d have justifiable reasons as to why they did it. This event taught me that just because there are a few myths as to why something happened, you don’t have to agree with them. America is my home, but never will I ever agree that the dropping of Little Boy and Fat Man on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary. They could have been avoided and lives could have
In late August of 2012 a fisherman known as Vitaly Vershinin sighted Yeti in the Kemerovo region near Myski Village. In the boat the fisherman first thinking they were bears and then people he tried to get their attention. Later, the yetis “rushed away, all in fur, walking on two legs, making their way through the bushes and with two other limbs, straight up the hill” (“Just the Facts”). The fact that this fisherman sighted Yeti without looking for Yeti simply makes it more believable. Furthermore, a creature that walks on two legs and is covered in fur just resembles the concept of “yeti.” Although many people may discredit this sighting and others similar to it simply due to the lack of evidence, situations like this are the main reasons sightings occur. If a Yeti researcher goes out into the forest looking for Yeti they most likely will not see a Yeti due to the noise they make and the scent they output through the wind. When just fishing on a boat the Yeti may not notice anything menacing and just carry on. Yetis are not stupid and this is why it remains so challenging to scientifically prove yeti’s existence, however the eyewitness accounts present an undeniable existence of
Born in Minnesota in 1941, Bob Dylan, then Robert Allen Zimmerman, befriended those less fortunate than him as a child. Through his childhood friends Dylan learned a valuable life lesson that material objects do not necessarily matter. Dylan’s childhood experiences of being the underdog shaped the political outcries that he sang about in the early 1960s. As a child, Dylan was influenced by early rock stars such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and “Little Richard (whom he used to imitate on the piano at high school dances)” (Bob Dylan). Young Bob Dylan even formed his own bands, which included The Golden Chords and Elston Gunn. Dylan then went and attended the University of Minneapolis and became a part of the folk scene. While in school Dylan became aware of the political and sexual freedoms amplifying among his peers. After dropping out of college Dylan then moved to New York and began to play small gigs until he was signed by Columbia Records in October of 1961. January of 1962, Dylan started to utilize his music in order to “show the experiences of injustice within American society” (Bob Dylan: 1960s Political and Social Movements ).
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“Romanticism, is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850” (Wikipedia).
Kanner, Barbara, ed. The Women of England: From Anglo Saxon Times to the Present. Hamden: The Shoe String Press, 1979.
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