As one reads Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, you notice that the women characters have more substance in comparison to their counterparts, the male characters. This is due to the period the novel was written where females were seen as inferior beings in comparison to the males. There are various factors in the novel that portray feminism. The three major points are women reflect on the men; women are shown as possessions that need protection from the men, and also women are shown as stereotypical women during that period.
Firstly, the women in the novel are shown to be there to reflect on the men. For starters, in the novel, no women are shown speaking directly. The novel has three narrators, that is, Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton …show more content…
She falsely accused and even Victor did not come to her defense. She confessed to the murder charges as she was harassed by a man even when she was innocent. She accepted her fate, and this shows another example of how women in that era were passive.
There is a lack of leading women in the novel, and Victor tries to eliminate the females as he creates his person, without giving reproduction a chance. Victor tried to play God and tried to make the females obsolete. When the monster demands a companion from Victor, he tries making one for him but later changes his mind and destroys the creature.
Women of this era were considered as innocent, pure, kind but submissive, powerless, passive and were believed not to be able to function on their own in public as they were silent throughout te novel. Women did not speak directly and had everything they had to say through a male companion.
Shelley story shows that women were inferior to men. She used Caroline, Elizabeth, and Justine to change how women are viewed. It has taken around hundreds of years for women to gain strides when it comes to equality thanks to writers like Mary