Gender Roles In Macbeth And Frankenstein

A poet named G.D Anderson once said "Feminism isn't about making women strong. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength." Whether it’s the power over life and death or the power of a country, absolute power can corrupt. The Women, however, are very influential and are the reason some things do or don’t work in tragedies like Frankenstein and Macbeth. The two novels are about a mad scientist obsessed with creating life, and a Lord with dangerous ambitions who meet the same fate after pursuing a dark path. The choices the men make in these stories are credited to the women in some way or another. The women in both stories were influential, and without them, the stories would have taken a drastic

Gender roles are the social scripts that define stereotypical daily life and how people should act, dress, and speak. Gender roles are confining in modern day life, but they are nothing compared to those in Elizabethan England and the 1800’s. In the day, women were viewed as a thing to be bought, and their thoughts and ideas were often discarded. What men often didn’t realize was how influential women were in their lives. Macbeth and Victor’s significant others were extremely different from each other, however, both of their personalities added to their husband’s demise. Lady Macbeth is Macbeth’s wife, and while the witches planted the seed of Macbeth becoming king, Lady Macbeth nurtured it. Lady Macbeth was the ‘man’ in the relationship and was cunning, power-hungry, and ruthless which was not in accordance to the gender roles of that time period. In Elizabethan England, women were generally not allowed to participate in politics. Lady Macbeth was smart, and so she worked from the inside. When she saw the chance for a status change, she stepped up, and out of gender roles and told her husband to man

Elizabeth ended up dead because the monster wanted revenge, and took out his anger on her. This conforms to the stereotype and belief back in the 1800’s (When it took place) that women were very frail, and were a way to really hit their enemies in the heart. Instead of killing Victor, the monster killed his wife. A very similar situation occurred in Act 4, Scene 2 of Macbeth when Macbeth killed Macduff’s family with the intent of silencing Macduff. It is a reoccurring theme in many stories that the wife will suffer instead of the husband. It is a strike at the emotions of the enemy, for they are taking away their life partner. The action itself is cowardice, for the attacker is not brave enough to face the husband. Victor also participated in this act when he killed the monster’s significant other. The reason for this murder was not revenge like the others, but in his mind for the good of