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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender issues in literature
Gender issues in literature
Gender issues in literature
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Heroes and Heroines "Who the heck are you?" Victor Frankenstein cried. "What the heck are you?" "I am the wretch created by your beloved Elizabeth," cried the vaguely female wretch. "Elizabeth has passed the limits of the human realm and in her feverish pursuit of the essential knowledge of the world she has spawned the being that you now see before you!" "And what do you want from me, you frightening monstrosity whom my innocent and sheltered eyes should never have been made to look upon?" The wretch snickered. "I am a monstrous version of Elizabeth, her child, brought forth by her own hand. She has forsaken me, cast me aside and thus made me miserable! Therefore I have vowed to destroy everything she loves, even sweet and mild Victor, just as she destroyed all happiness for me. Rrrrr!" "Oh, help me! Help me!" Victor Frankenstein cried. "Oh! Oh!" Now wait just one second. Very funny, but that's not how the story goes. For one thing, Victor Frankenstein does not squeal like a-girl? Victor Frankenstein created the monster. Victor Frankenstein was the ambitious one who took his experiments too far. A monstrous version of Victor destroyed everything he loved. Elizabeth was sweet and mild. Elizabeth was the innocent who died because of Victor's work gone wrong. Frankenstein would have been a remarkable book if Elizabeth had taken on Victor's part, if Victor had taken on Elizabeth's part, and if the wretch had been female. Imagine Victor staying at home and being the best example of the sweetest nature anyone ever did see. Imagine Elizabeth storming acros the icy mountains after the wretch, and imagine the wretch demanding a husband to be a boon to her, sweet and supportive company when she became tired of the world. Switching the gender roles in such a way would be comical because that's not the way it's done. When we read about, watch, or listen to our fictional heroes and heroines, we expect certain behaviors from them. We have a set of rules by which we define male and female characters, and characters that don't adhere to the general rules are anomalies and misfits.
When Victor Frankenstein breaks his promise to the monster, it threatens him by saying that he’ll return on Victors wedding. Victor assumes that it’s his life that’s being threatened but the night of the marriage, Victor finds his Elizabeth. “She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and… running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.” (Chapter 23) This quote conveys that the monster didn’t feel bad for killing Victor’s bride, he believed that it was a justified murder because he was repaying the heartache that he felt for his lost mate. This act of cruelty helped develop the monsters sense of right and wrong. The monster was born innocent but after being treated so cruelly for so long, his moral compass was corrupted. He felt as if it was his right to do this to this to Victor.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley introduces the change from good to evil with the attention that guardians give a child. William Crisman, in his critique of Mary Shelley’s work, identifies the “sibling rivalry” between Victor and the rest of his family. Crisman remarks that Victor feels as if he is the most important person in his parents’ lives, since he was Alphonse’s and Caroline’s only child. The Frankensteins adopt Elizabeth and Victor sarcastically remarks that he has a happy childhood. This prompts Victor starts to read essays about alchemy and study natural science. Anne Mellor, another critic of Frankenstein, proposes that Frankenstein’s creature was born a good person and society’s reaction to him caused him to turn evil. Victor’s makes the creature in his own perception of beauty, and his perception of beauty was made during a time in his life when he had secluded himself from his family and friends. He perceived the monster as “Beautiful!”, but Victor unknowingly expressed the evil in himself, caused by secluding himself from everybody, onto the creature (60). In this way, the creature is Victor’s evil mirrored onto a body. The expression of Victor onto the monster makes the townspeople repulsed by the creature. The theory of the “alter ego” coincides with Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry (Mellor). Mary Shelley conveys that through Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry, Victor isolates himself from society. Mellor describes the isolation during his creation of his creature leads to him giving the creature false beauty that causes Victor to abandon him and society to reject him.
In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley displays revenge. She does this by making the being turn its back against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Victor is traumatised with the guilty knowledge that the monster he has created is responsible for the death of two loved ones, William, his younger brother and Justine Moritz, a girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household. The monster kills Elizabeth, Victor’s wife, on their wedding day. This is because the monster begged Victor to create a female friend for him but Victor destroyed it when he remembered what a danger they both could have been to themselves and to everyone around them.
Certainly the male characters in ‘Frankenstein’ are more developed that those of the females. Elizabeth Fay has suggested that the female characters are ‘idealised figures’ in much of Shelley’s work, particularly in the descriptions of Caroline and Elizabeth, the two mother figures in the novel.
In this essay I will be looking at the differences between the creation of the first and second monster, how Mary Shelley portrays the feelings of Victor and the monster and the different myths and legends that she refers to within the novel. Victor Frankenstein had a wonderful life as a child: 'No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself' (p.39) He was loving and cared deeply for his family, especially for his foster-sister, Elizabeth, who he looked upon as his own, and saw as a 'more than sister' (p.37). Victor always had an 'eager desire to learn' (p.39) about 'the secrets of heaven and earth' (p.39). When he was thirteen years old he started studying the works of Cornelius Agrippa and the fact that his father called it all 'sad trash' (p.40) fuelled his curiosity and enthusiasm and caused him to study even more which was to him, 'the fatal impulse that led to my [his] ruin' (p.41).
Pantheon and Hagia Sophia Pantheon and Hagia Sophia are two extremely outstanding architectural pieces of their times. They have been built according to the traditions of those particular times. The materials used to built these buildings and the purpose for which they were used are all very important aspects and have been briefly covered in this report. Pantheon The statesman Agrippa built pantheon in 27 B.C. Then it was completely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian. The Pantheon is remarkable for its size, its construction, and its design. The dome was the largest built until modern times. The present structure was probably originally built as a temple for all the pagan gods. We do hear of it as being a law-court and a reception area for Emperor Hadrian meeting his quests too. Some say that the rotunda of the building was once a Roman bath. Due to all this mystery, the Pantheon is often referred to as the Sphinx of Rome. The visitor will probably not appreciate the construction as much as the Flavian amphitheatre, but it is still a great masterpiece of engineering and well worth a visit. Most Roman and Greek temples at the time of the Pantheon's construction were large, colonnaded, rectangular enclosures with sanctuaries situated in their centers. The Pantheon was different. It consisted of a large circular drum topped with a hemispherical dome. It is a masterpiece of both engineering and art a lasting memory of Ancient Rome’s might. Roman architecture is architecture of wall and enclosed tactile space. Individual column with entablature is no longer the basic architectural unity. Spatially, it shows a development from closed, simple space units and regular articulation to more complex spatial relations, more fluid interpenetrati...
In any novel the author is free to create and shape their characters in whatever way they see fit. In Frankenstein, Shelley does an excellent job of shaping her characters, be it however minute their part in the story, so that the reader gets a clear picture of Shelley's creations. It seems that each character in Shelley's Frankenstein is created by Shelley to give the reader a certain impression of the character. By doing this Shelley creates the characters the way she wants us to see them. She tells us certain things about them and gives them certain traits so that they will fit into the story the way she wants them to. In particular I will examine the characters of the monster, Elizabeth, and old man De Lacey.
This novel supports Shelley’s thought about society’s attitude toward female authors and how they were considered inferior. She demonstrates how female authors are shunned by society, just like the creature is shunned. The creature embodies the feminist ideals Shelley weaves into the novel and highlights societies unfair treatment of women. In some ways Shelley identifies with Victor because both of their creations were not what they expected them to be and were worried about the criticism they would receive for it. They both hid their creations for a while, Shelley did not immediately claim the novel and Frankenstein did not claim his experiment
Victor Frankenstein ruined his life by creating a monster, that killed his entire family. One victim of the monster was Elizabeth, who was the person that always got Victor through his toughest times, and gave him motivation to stay alive. The death of Elizabeth was the last straw for Victor, and led to his death. Elizabeth, whose role in the book is Victor's foundation, is necessary to the novel because if she did not die Victor would not have chased the monster and ended up dying.
Smith begins her essay by looking at the historical factors that may have contributed to this seemingly sexist book. Shelley, writing in the first half of the 19th Century, was in a period in which a woman "was conditioned to think she needed a man's help" (Smith 275). In the novel itself, no women speak directly. The book has three basic narrators: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein's monster. The female characters are very weak in this novel, especially Elizabeth, Victor's cousin/fiancé (no they aren't from Arkansas). She is portrayed as the perfect woman, especially after Victor's mother, Caroline dies. She takes the place of the mother figure in the household. But just like all the female characters in the story, her character has little substance. Victor's character is described in detail, as is that of the monster, and Henry Clerval. When Henry gets killed, sympathy is really felt toward Victor, because he has just lost his lifetime friend. When Elizabeth is murdered, the reader finds it hard to connect with what Frankenstein is feeling. Elizabeth (and the other main female characters: Justine and Caroline) are there to reflect the men characters. Professor Smith states in her essay that "women function not in their own right but rather as signals of and conduits for men's relations with other men" (283). This is especially clear when the monster kills Elizabeth on their wedding night. The monster is upset with Victor, so instead of hurting him, he kills his wife. Elizabeth is used as a sort of ruler to measure the relationship between Victor and his monster.
Have you ever felt insignificant while standing in front of a monumental building that you have seen in small images of your history book? No one could imagine the atmosphere and physical beauty inside the most beautiful structures in the world, the Pantheon and the Florence cathedral. While sitting at the fountain in front of the Pantheon, one can see the huge columns rising towards the entablature and the walls curving behind to form a cylinder. Although the exterior of the pantheon could look majestic, the interior is just as breathtaking. The first thing someone does when they enter the Pantheon is to look up at the coffered dome and the oculus. The important feature that seemed impossible to have been built during the time that the Pantheon
Shelly’s Frankenstein is easily regarded as one of the world’s finest pieces of literature. A reason why it’s in a class of its own is because of the strong feminist undertones present throughout the work. All of Shelly’s female characters come across as inferior to the males; this character portrayal was accurate to the time period when the novel was written, in which this did happen to be the case. An example of this would be how Shelly described Elizabeth, “Who’s hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head,” when the Victor’s mother came across her (Shelly 20). Right from the start of the novel Elizabeth is presented as weak. Victor later stated when his mother brought Elizabeth home that she was “A possession of my own” (Shelly 21). Not only is Elizabeth presented as weak, but also an item to be used however the Frankenstein family wants. And that want was for Elizabeth to become Victor’s wife, “Till dead she was to be” Victor’s only (Shelly 21). She is showed to the reader as feeble, in a powerless position, and overall incapable of supporting her-self without others; at the mercy of men (Feminism and Frankenstein). Putting fe...
Mary Shelley and Jonathan Swift were completely us”(Swift, 73). Swift doesn’t think highly of chambermaids. Swift in general portrays females, even his wife, in a rather unjust way. The girls of Brobdingnag “would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet directly before their naked bodies, which, I am sure, to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust.”(Swift 133) Gulliver’s thoughts clearly address the youth of Swift’s time. Contrary to Swift’s writing, Shelly’s Frankenstein portrays females in an esteemed fashion. Females play active roles in Frankenstein, whether to Victor or to Felix. In fact, women help Victor develop in the reader’s eyes which is impossible to notice unless they are mentioned. Elizabeth is the guiding light of Victor, before and after his maddening state of creation. When Victor is re-united with Elizabeth he describes her in romantic fashion, “time had since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years.” (Shelly 67) This is completely opposite to Gulliver. Whether it be his mom, Justine, or Elizabeth; Victor has positive encounters with females. It can also be noted that the Frankenstein monster “demand[s] a creature of another sex… and it shall content me” (Shelly 135). This request that the monster asks for is crucial as it shows the necessary interactions between males and females that Shelly, not Swift, shows.
One of Wickham’s many unpleasant attributes is his deceitfulness. Once he sees that Elizabeth has been captured by h...