Patriarchy In Frankenstein Essay

The character of Elizabeth can be seen as the ultimate culmination of Shelley’s informed and perspicacious critique of the patriarchy as a vast system of organisations, founded and run by men, with the clear purpose of owning and disposing of women. Shelley combines all the patriarchal critiques she imbued into the tragedies of Elizabeth’s female peers, such as the institutionalised gaslighting of Justine Moritz or Caroline’s Beaufort’s coercion into being rescued and puts them into the character of Elizabeth to make her final statement concerning the utter tragedy and pain women go through in order to appease the desires of men.

In her astute essay, “The Ghost of a Self,” Vanessa Dickerson puts forward the idea that Shelley writes her female

This is a throughline for the novel; even in death Elizabeth is objectified, referred to as “it.” Often, Elizabeth’s only form of speech is through secondhand sources; letters wrote to Victor or stories told by his father, and even in these her speech is narrowed into traditionally patriarchal forms of femininity, such as “fainting” when she hears news of William or taking on the maternal role in the Frankenstein family. Shelley’s portrayal of Elizabeth being voiceless is used to build to her larger point about a world which

Not only does Shelley use this to provide commentary on how early women are boxed off into their stereotypical roles by the patriarchy, but also on how they become trapped. This is highlighted by the differences in the lifestyles of Victor and Elizabeth following adolescence; Victor is free to become an academic and pursue his deepest desires that have been cultivating since he was a child, but Elizabeth, who Victor made reference to as “following the aerial creations of the poets,” is relegated to a life as a mother and given far less choice in comparison to Victor. This once again brings Mary Wollstonecraft’s commentary on the lack of education given to women to mind, with Shelley subtextually questioning if Elizabeth would have sought out such a life if not forced into it. Elizabeth’s assimilation into patriarchal desires corresponds with her increasing sparsity in the book, rarely appearing other than in short, concentrated amounts spread out throughout the book. Shelley uses this structural technique to reflect how patriarchy perpetuates women’s loss of identity and individuality as they conform to what they ‘should be,’ much in the vein of her mother’s