Frankenstein Gender Roles Essay

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Men Above Women Through an analysis of female and male characters in comparison, the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley outlines strict gender roles and levels of power. Shelley incorporates usages of strong literary devices such as objective correlatives, irony, and metaphors to further enunciate the gender roles throughout the novel. This novel was written during the Romanticism period, which is highly reflected in the novel as the gender roles depicted are an accurate reflection of gender roles during the 1800s. Throughout this gothic novel, “a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery” (Baldwick), Mary Shelley depicts these strict gender roles and levels of power strategically through introductions, or …show more content…

“...when I reflected how dreadful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife...,” (Shelley 188), Victor was aware his soon to be wife was in danger of being murdered, but failed to do anything about it and let her continue to show care and concern for his agitated state. This alone shows the irony in how women continuously show support and nurture towards men, but men will still do as they please, with no real regard to how it will affect women. “The murderous mark of the friend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips,” (Shelley 189). Even after Elizabeth was murdered by Victor’s creation, he still referred to the killer as “friend.” Irony serves a large purpose in this quote, such as it proves a man will still consider another man a friend even after killing their soon to be wife. Irony, overall, gave Elizabeth’s death a much larger meaning. From Elizabeth’s introduction, she was nothing but supportive and nurturing to Victor and his work, but was later killed by Victor’s work in which he regarded as his “friend.” Gender roles are boldly outlined by this event as it shows what a man can and will do to continue with their …show more content…

Men were also expected to be mentally tough and to not shed a tear. This is first seen during Robert Walton’s Arctic expedition. All the human characters presented throughout the novel fit in with the societal norms, such as Walton living up to the standard of his role as man- using his intelligence for research doing a “man’s job,” while his sister emotionally supports him and emphasizes a woman’s role of nurturing and being there for the men. Gender roles, though, are quickly questioned after the monster is created. The monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, never explicitly defines the monster's gender. Mary Shelley carefully devised this and continued to use metaphors throughout the monster's existence to explain the monster's gender and societal norms around binary gender roles. Metaphor can be defined as, “the most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two,”

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