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Objectification In Frankenstein

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Allusions to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft is widely accepted as one of the mothers of Feminism. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, her most famous book, Wollstonecraft identifies many of the key issues concerning feminist ideology. Her daughter, Mary Shelly, was undoubtedly influenced by her mother’s feminist ideology. Many parts of the feminist ideology Shelley presents in her famous novel Frankenstein. While Wollstonecraft points out many faults in a patriarchal society, Shelly focuses on three of these points in Frankenstein. First, is the objectification of women and how it is taught generationally. The second is the importance of education, and how women lack …show more content…

She writes that “men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects'' (CP,165). Wollstonecraft heavily argues that objectification is offensive to women. Vukelic comments on Wollstonecraft’s points saying “[Men] tend to forget that women are also human beings equal to them and instead treat them as subordinate beings, see them only as their mistresses, and objectify them” (Vukelic, 12). This type of objectification is evident in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through Victor’s mother presenting Elizabeth to Victor as a gift, and Victor’s receival of …show more content…

Mary Shelly counters this norm of society through the De Lacey family’s education of foreigner Safie. While staying in the cottage unbeknownst to the De Laceys, the monster learns alongside Safie about many topics including language, history, biology, and philosophy. “Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors” (Shelly, pg (ch. 13). Mary Shelly shows the beginning of women’s education through the character of Safie. The differences between Victor and Elizabeth's education, and the education of Safie in Frankenstein, both point back to Wollstonecraft’s push for changes in the education of women described in A Vindication of the Rights of

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