Female Roles In Frankenstein Essay

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Recommended: The role of women in the late 19th century

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker, both nineteenth century texts, present women and their roles within society at that time as one of subservience to their male counterparts. Women had no independent means of subsistence, and were obliged to follow the conventions set by men.
Therefore it’s hard to believe that Shelley, a daughter of one of the leading feminists of the day was responsible for presenting women as the submissive role to their male counterparts. How ironic it is that that she was not subservience to her male counterparts in her own life, because although of her father’s disapproval of her partner Percy Shelley, who was already married and to his pregnant wife. She fled to France with him, and disowned herself from her family.
It’s fascinating that she was responsible for the novel Frankenstein where women are given such little importance, due to the dominant male characters. Women are given no voice at all as the story is told by three male narrators, Walton, Victor and the monster, which is only a reflection of the position men had in all aspects of life, domestic, social, political and economic in the nineteenth century.

Caroline Beaufrot the mother of Victor, is the first example we have of women’s subservience to their male counterparts. She had been caring for her ill father as ‘her time was more entirely occupied in attending him’ but when his death came she was left ‘an orphan and a beggar’. Even though she had worked tiresly in his need. She was in reality only a form of comfort to him until death came. Alphonese Frankenstein was friends with her father Beaufrot, and on a visit to the chamber he discovered Caroline weeping by her father’s coffin. Some would argue that Alphonese is the ...

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... sex, perhaps Victor is unable to have a female relationship with anyone except his mother. But on the other we must realise that Victor in a way has just given birth himself by creating the monster as he bypassed the normal methods of creation and made women completely unnecessary. Women in the nineteenth century were restricted to very narrow roles. They could either be a pure mother and wife or regarded as a whore. Women in the nineteenth century were frowned upon the inability to reproduce. With Victor creating life without women it more or less demoralises women and their sole purpose in life.

END PARAGRAPH include something like this in it -
Even though men are the protagonists in Frankenstein. It is full of the mistakes they make in life, whilst shelley is making a truly feminist point by stating that women are the real backbone of society.

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