Elizabeth's Role In Frankenstein Essay

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the women in the novel as an important part of creation; without them and their nurturing personalities, the story would not be able to progress.

As one of the main female characters, Elizabeth did not play a strong character, but her role was still crucial because she helped move the story along in a way that showed that certain explorations of science can be harmful. First, historically the only reason she would be needed, as Victor Frankenstein’s mate, would be to give birth, but that role is filled by Victor himself. Right before Victor brings the creature to life, he thinks, “I beheld the accomplishments of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around

Mary Shelley purposefully has Victor use comments that are indicative of the excitement and anxiety a woman may experience when bringing life into the world. This alludes to him achieving something that, before this, only women could achieve. Elizabeth does not create life, it is Victor who takes that role which makes her character strength essentially obsolete. Second, the life that Victor creates ends up taking Elizabeth’s life before she can fulfill the expected role she would have had as his wife. Victor finds the creature through a window after the creature kills Elizabeth: “A grin was on the face of the monster […] as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife” (190). Mary Shelley uses Elizabeth to show the consequences of Victor’s actions. He took a crucial role from women, which ultimately caused destruction and havoc. In short, Elizabeth does not have a major role in the novel, because

The majority of her character development is based on being a mother and her feelings toward her children. When she dies, Victor describes her passing: “She died calmly […] and her countenance expressed affection even in death” (32). Through Shelley’s writing, she creates the image of a woman who is kind, nurturing, and affectionate to her loved ones. Caroline did express the ability to be a strong character when she stepped in and took over as a mother for Elizabeth, a poorly cared for infant, in order to give her a better life. To further exemplify the traditional female role, her dreams shifted to her children having their own families. As Caroline is dying, she tells Victor and Elizabeth, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union” (31). By expressing that she wants Victor and Elizabeth to get married, readers can infer that she also desires for them to have a future family. By Victor taking science to the next level with creating the creature, he destroys the one wish that his mother had on her deathbed. Her own creations are ruined by an advancement in science. Although her character is short-lived in the novel and seen as not as strong as others, Shelley brings to life a character whose