Sexism In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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When discussing issues presented in Mary Shelley’s famous Frankenstein, sexism may seem completely irrelevant. One would expect Mary Shelley, a woman herself and the daughter of feminist author Mary Wolstencraft to present her female characters in a fair way. However, Frankenstein is a surprisingly sexist work. In this paper, I will analyze how the female monster from Frankenstein is a victim of objectification, a problem which has been rampant from Shelley’s time to the modern day. First, let’s define objectification. Objectification is the act of reducing a woman to a simple object in the way she is treated and thought of. In her journal article, Objectification, Marta Nussbaum identifies several characteristics of objectification, …show more content…

Nussbaum defines ownership as treating someone as “something that is owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.” (257). In Frankenstein, the female monster is basically seen by Victor as a bargaining piece for getting the monster to leave him be. She was a good that Victor was going to sell to the monster in exchange for the monster no longer interacting with mankind. Some may argue that this is not sexism because Victor was merely doing this to ease the monster’s murderous rage or because the monster was just trying to get what he wanted in the only way he knew how to. I agree with those statements, but they do not negate the fact that the female monster is seen as something to be sold. Regardless of the intentions behind this trade, it is still …show more content…

The problem is that it is not just this one song, but a multitude of other songs, television shows, magazines, books, and much more that imply similar things. This ends up being a really big deal because all of small sexist things we allow come together to create one big, monstrous, sexist society. It is easy to look down on the people of Mary Shelley’s time and accuse them of being ignorant misogynists, but are we really so different? We still see women as existing to please men, we still think a woman’s looks define her worth, and gender roles are enforced on our children since infancy. I am not denying that things have improved. Women legally have all the rights than men do, and there are certainly more progressive-minded individuals out there, but society as a whole still has this objectification-mindset towards women and that is not ok.
The consequences of thinking of women as objects like the monster from Frankenstein does or like real-life monster Robin Thicke does are grave. This mindset justifies actions like sexual harassment, body-shaming, and even rape by denying women autonomy and subjectivity, and seeing them as something that can be owned. Today, one in four women will be sexually assaulted, and one in six women will experience an attempted or completed rape (“Facts and Figures”). Every woman will see body shaming to some

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