Subordination In Frankenstein

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Subordination of Women in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Introduction

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus or her “hideous progeny”, as she referred to the novel herself. Typically, the novel came at the time when the world-changing effects of the French Revolution and the First Industrial Revolution were still as strong as ever. Numerous social, political, economic, but above all scientific advancements took place in that period whose extensive elaboration in Frankenstein shows that Mary Shelley was very well acquainted with their existence. As such, her use of science in the book directly relates to the many discoveries of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, specifically the

In other words, this seemingly minor feature of conveying Margaret’s words and attitudes, as well as blatantly disregarding them, through her brother is in truth an extremely powerful device used to “push [all female characters in Frankenstein] to the perimeter, relegating them to passively serving as an audience for male stories” (Hale). Hale will even go that far as to say that Margaret’s character is only “a tool of communication”

On the other hand, all tragic events in Frankenstein are shown to stem directly not only from men’s subjugation of women, but also from men’s deliberate detachment from the emotional sphere of life it is easy to see that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a unique work of fiction which in an extremely cunning way both mirrors the societal constructs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and speaks against them. Its unusual solution for the depiction of the obvious real-life issues and female concerns still represents a fruitful discussion topic in and out of the classrooms. And it surely will continue to do so, for many years to