Elizabeth as a Typical Victorian Woman in Frankenstein

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Elizabeth as a Typical Victorian Woman in Frankenstein

Elizabeth is an important character in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She is also the most important person in Victor’s life for many reasons. Not only is she beautiful beyond belief, she is also submissive and meek. Elizabeth knows her role in the household and she fulfills her duties without hesitation or complaint. Always concerned for Victor, she is willing to do anything to ensure his happiness. Elizabeth is Victor’s prized possession, that which he must value and protect above all other things. She is his faithful love. Elizabeth’s many qualities classify her as a typical woman of nineteenth-century Victorian England.

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 abroad to Cocking, to Bowling Alleys, to Plays and Horse Races. . . I stayed in the country having many times a sorrowful and heavy heart . . . so as I may truly say, I am an owl in the desert. (Prior 200)

Similarly, in Frankenstein, while the young Victor Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerv...

... middle of paper ...

... Victor as his own.

Elizabeth is subservient, sentimental, nurturing, sacrificial, and beautiful. She possesses all the typical feminine characteristics. Hence, 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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