The Oppression Of Women In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein critiques the Victorian culture that actively seeks to oppress women through the metaphor of the monster and the use of submissive female characters. The representation of women within the novel conform to the gothic genre elements as they all suffer brutal murders which highlight the indifference towards the treatment of women within that era. The characters Justine, Elizabeth and Margaret depict the passive nature of women and the submissive behaviour that is used to provide an avenue for the male characters. Juxtaposed to this, the characterization of the monster contributes to its depiction of the oppressed group of women in the nineteenth century. Similarly, the creature provides fear as it threatens the conventions …show more content…

The creature is physically male, yet exhibits feminine qualities, thus, it threatens to disrupt the foundations of the Victorian gender binary. Ultimately, Frankenstein challenges the view of gender roles and highlights the mistreatment of the oppressed female demographic within the rigid societal constraints of the nineteenth century.

The female characters throughout Frankenstein are constructed to be passive, submissive and irrelevant unless they can be used to benefit men. This represents the ideology in which women were used within the social, historic and cultural realms of the nineteenth century. The women in the text hold no real significance; they are stripped of their voices, leaving only the word of the men that inhabit the rest of the novel. The first female character is introduced as Margaret Saville, Robert Walton’s sister. There is no information given to the reader about this character, she holds no position other than to connect Walton back to his homeland. In doing so, Shelley has created the first image of a woman’s place within the Victorian society; she is invisible, she is isolated from the reader and her thoughts and feelings are never expressed directly. They are only ever briefly mentioned through Walton’s own thoughts; “You will not hear of my destruction, and you will

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