Gender Roles In Frankenstein

Women's Roles in Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus Women have not always had as many rights as they do now, their roles used to consist mainly of helping other people, and not doing anything for themselves. Mary Shelley explores the idea of women playing a standard societal role, and having no significant power. Even though Shelley is a female, no women in this story play a remarkable role. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Shelley portrays the female characters as inconsequential, and highlights them as playing the role that society expects of them. Mary Shelley uses character Elizabeth Lavenza to showcase the importance of reliability. After Victor’s mother dies of the scarlet fever, Victor says, “While I admired her understanding and

Elizabeth has been demeaned down to a basic tool that the creature

After Safie arrives in the village, she knows that she will not be accepted by the DeLacey family, so she decides to take on the language and daily habits and summarizes her days: “My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily master the language […] whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken […] I also learned the science of letters” (Shelley 109, 110). Safie is not a standard women role played in this novel because she helps the creature learn and take after her. By that, the creature truly understands her, which also makes him not want to harm her. However, in contrast, one of her main roles is to have Felix fall in love with her so that he can get a woman, which does demean her into that standard role that Shelley displays throughout the other women in this novel. The creature falls into the trap in which men take advantage of women. The creature is mad at Victor and wants him to “repay” him by creating a female creature for him to love on, and the creature says, “You must create a female for me, which whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley 136). The creature does not take advantage of women and he instead wants a real relationship with a woman and to have someone he can trust and