What Is Melor's Argument In Frankenstein

When overviewing the life of Mary Shelley, it is an undeniable fact feminism saturated the viewpoints of Frankenstein’s author. Hence, reading Anne K. Mellor’s Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein provides valuable insight into discovering the deeper message sown within the fabric of this early eighteenth century novel. However, though we may be able to say with certainty Frankenstein is a tale in the dangers of the destruction of women, the bold point requires further evidence to substantiate the sound logical reasoning behind Mellor’s argument. Let us focus on the point of contention where logic is strong but evidence is rather lacking: Creating a society of only men.

Mellor summarizes this argument in the opening paragraphs to her

article:
One of the deepest horrors of this novel is Frankenstein’s implicit goal of creating a society for men only: his creature is male; he refuses to create a female; there is no reason that the race of immortal beings he hoped to propagate should not be exclusively male.
By refusing to create a female sex, Mellor argues he wanted to remove the female sex by giving all reproductive power to men.

In this way, the men then would have ultimate power in society by having reduced the necessity of the female to nil. Yet can the discerning reader truly adopt this as truth? In looking at the reasoning behind the creation of the story, never once does Frankenstein wish to create a female replacement in the way argued by Mellor. For, when she particularly looks at the strong symbolism between the creation of the monster and the loss of Frankenstein's mother a conclusion is drawn that he was trying to become his mother. However, how can we argue this point when we consider that the reasoning behind the monster’s creation was to reverse the death of a female character? Furthermore, the reasoning behind the creation of the monster given to the reader seem rather vague. In reviewing page thrity-one of our edition, it is clear from the outset our protagonist concentrates on the issue of creating the monster because of his desire to explore where life originated: “Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?” If Frankenstein is to be trusted, then we cannot conclude from his disclosed reasoning that his goal was the replacement of the female sex. Rather, it was to further the age old question of the origins of

life.
Despite this reasoning to the contrary of Moller’s thesis, we cannot deny the strength of the analysis and logic used to substantiate her claim on this issue that Shelley intends for us to see Frankenstein as replacing the female sex. Simply looking at the paragraphs following the final creation of the monster, the dream of Elizabeth and Frankenstein’s mother in particular build to this conclusion. Here, we see on page thirty-six of our text we read that the man saw his lover transformed into the corpse of his deceased mother. This image in and of itself supports quite strongly the thesis propagated by Moller. Hence, the logic for the replacement of females argument is quite strong using this example and other examples of imagery placed throughout the story. However, because Shelley seemed to have intentionally made her message vague in the story, more evidence must be presented in order to confirm a most agreeable argument.
In conclusion, in limiting ourselves to examining a small section of the text, the weight in favor of adopting Moeller’s interpretation of Frankenstein is particularly heavy. However, we cannot wholeheartedly embrace the convincing logic of Moller without proper evidence. Particularly concerning is the lack of connection between Moller’s implied reasoning of the story and the clearly stated reasoning of the characters. Although the novel’s feminist author left a message for her readers, this patron of her pen would like to see more reasoning before adopting a certain interpretation of the text by contemporary critics.