Because of her feminist background, Frankenstein can be seen as a criticism of the arrogant, dominate and masculine, scientific world. In the novel, Frankenstein creates the monster with unnatural forces. In the natural order of the world one must be born, then live, and then die. Frankenstein puts together an abomination to nature. Mary Shelley, preferring the natural shows that nature and women which are often viewed as parallel are victimized by which some men remove themselves from the natural environment like Victor who attempts to claim the women’s perspective to create life and completely removes the role and need for a women to create life. Victor tries to take it for himself in science and alchemy.
Development of the child
Mary Shelley’s mother died 11 days after giving birth to her. She grew up with the absence of a mother figure in her life. Similar to her own, Mary Shelley to portrays a family without a mother and that of a dominant yet absent father.
Shelley could have written this story to express her emotions of discontent of the absence of a mother in her life
Therefore, Frankenstein can be interpreted as the result of what happens when a child grows up without nurture. Shelley attempts to convey the importance of a motherly figure and her nurturing in the development of a child. In Frankenstein, Shelly directly emphasizes that lacking a mother causes coping problems within oneself. Knowing about Shelley’s life, we focus more on the absence of a mother as a cause for the monster’s immoral doings.
The cause of the monster’s reason of destruction ultimately started with Victor rejection of his creation for the ugliness of its appearance.
“I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room”
Victor did not have it in his capacity to be a mother; he was simply a creator and played his role effectively. The job of a creator is to create, whereas the job of a mother is to mother.
A mother would love their child unconditionally despite their appearance and the monster was born unfortunately with an appearance that only a true mother could really love. Had the monster been born with a mother, it would have known love and not just have seen it from spying on the De Laceys. The monster would have been nurtured and made better decisions.
Frankenstein's monster admits that "Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone" which in fact provides the reasoning behind the monsters path towards destruction. The decisions that the monster makes such as the killing of William, Henry and Elizabeth, and the framing of Justine are a result of the monsters inability to cope with the fact that he is alone in the world. He lacked the nurturing role of a mother which is vital to the growth and moral development of an individual. It left the monster without someone to turn to, rely on or guide.
Even though the creature receives a moral and intellectual education through reading books, the lack of nurturing and an overwhelming feeling of rejection lead the monster to reject morality.
In addition, learning about Mary Shelley’s Life reveals Feminist opinions in Frankenstein through the passive minor character
The book has 3 male narrators, Walton, Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s monster. No woman ever speaks directly to the reader. All the females in the novel are weak, passive and minor characters and above all ill-fated.
This is surprising since Mary Shelley grew up reading books on feminism that her mother wrote and that she would oppose what her mother believed in.
Shelley chooses to make them all passive because for one that is the way it was in her society and second she is showing the flaws of her society. Shelley is basically showing what goes wrong in a society dominated by males and a society where females are oppressed.
Caroline is a self sacrificing mother dies taking care of her adopted daughter
Justine executed for murder despite her innocence
Elizabeth waits, impatient but helpless, for Victor to return to her, and she is eventually murdered by the monster
Victor rejects the creation of a female monster because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated.
Victor describes as he contemplates the creation of a female monster “I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea” The moon and sea are often images relating to women. “I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation”
This passage is a very feminist passage and sounded like Mary Shelley ranting about the inequality of women’s rights at that time.
The lack of women can also be seen as a source of disorder and misery, as the Creature desired nothing else but to have a female counterpart and took away Frankenstein’s loved ones in order to pressure him for another creation.
Shelly makes her female characters so passive and subjects them to such ill treatment in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and the monster exhibit.
By learning about Mary Shelley’s life we can see the book being focused from a different perspective, a feminist perspective through the absence of a mother, and the roles of the minor female characters.
