Feminism and Frankenstein - Case Study Example

Feminism and Frankenstein At the beginning of the 19th century, the concept of feminism was still relatively new. Women had specific prescribed roles to fill in society and those who didn’t fit into the mold were typically ostracized or otherwise brought to ruin. Despite this, women often found means of breaking out of their limited spheres enough to express some of the greater issues encountered within this male-dominated system. One of the more successful female writers emerging during this time period and addressing this issue was Mary Shelley. Growing up in a more progressive household and influenced by her husband and his literati friends, Shelley incorporated many of her feminist beliefs and observations within the characters that populate her novel Frankenstein. The story is presented as a series of letters from Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Seville, detailing the strange and frightening story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and what occurred after he successfully created a unique yet grotesque life form in a laboratory. While there are numerous themes to be traced throughout the novel, the beginnings of feminism can be traced as well. With an understanding of the concept of feminism as well as some biographical information regarding Mary Shelley herself, it can be seen how the characters of Frankenstein demonstrate the forms and expectations regarding women at the beginning of the 19th century, particularly as can be seen in the characters of Justine Moritz, Elizabeth, Victor’s creation and Victor himself. Before an examination into the aspects of feminism seen in Frankenstein can be undertaken, one must first have a common conception of what is meant by the term. There are many different interpretations of the term and many more nuances within each interpretation (Haslanger & Tuana, 2004). It is recognized individually as a political movement that occurred in the United States and the United Kingdom particularly during the latter portion of the 19th and early portion of the 20th centuries as well as a set of ideas and ways of thinking that have occurred throughout time. In terms of a mode of thinking, the Bristol Women’s Studies Group (1979) says, “By feminism we mean both an awareness of womens position in society as one of disadvantage or inequality compared with that of men, and also a desire to remove those disadvantages” (3). This definition is application both forward from the time the term was first established in the late 19th century (Rendell, 1985) as well as retroactively as a philosophical stance. At the time that Shelley wrote her novel, 1818, the political movement had not yet reached recognizable proportions. For purposes of this discussion, therefore, the concept of feminism will be held to indicate a general concern with justice for women, particularly as it relates to the equal importance of women to the healthy functioning of society. Throughout her story, Shelley continuously illustrates how the failure of providing women with an equal degree of importance can lead to an overall failure of society, as will be traced in a moment, but first it is important to understand whether this would have been one of Shelley’s intents. Mary Shelley was born Mary Godwin in 1797, “just five months after her politically radical parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who did not believe in marriage, were married” (Wolf, 2004: 5). Her mother was one of the few feminists of her time, having published well-known commentaries regarding the rights of men and women and particularly for her stance that girls should be provided with an education sufficient to allow them to remain independent. Her father was equally well-known for his libertarian viewpoints and published works. Although her mother died soon after giving birth to Mary, Shelley was exposed to the world of the literati through her father, who encouraged her to use her imagination and allowed her to read through his collection as well as sit in on his conversations with other prominent writers of his time. These included William Wordsworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt (Pabst-Kastner, 2003). As things between Shelley and her step-mother became increasingly more unpleasant, Mary was sent to Scotland, where she experienced a new kind of family from what she had known: “They [the family she stayed with] inspired her later fictional representations of the nuclear family as a community of mutually dependent, equally respected, and equally self-sacrificing individuals” (Mellor, 1989). She led a rather difficult life with Percy Shelley, another writer, and remained unmarried through the birth of her three children, all fathered by Shelley, only the latter two of which survived. She wrote Frankenstein just before her second daughter was born and married Shelley just before the novel’s publication once his first wife had committed suicide. Mellor points out in her book that Shelley’s novel examines the gender roles of her society by highlighting the lack of a well-educated and equal-yet-different loving companion existing for men thanks to the restrictions placed on women as well as a real male fear of female sexuality through their attempt to use technology to control the female power of reproduction. The idea of male control over women is particularly evident in the character of Justine Moritz. Symbolic of the weak state of women, Justine is introduced as the third child of a servant family to the Frankenstein household who was adopted into the central family as the result of a particular liking Victor’s mother and Elizabeth took to the girl. Although she isn’t adopted to the same degree as Elizabeth herself had been, Justine is seen as a favorite and well-loved servant who is educated within the family home and encouraged to spend time with the children. She is accused of the murder not because she could have done such a thing or because she had any motive whatsoever to do so, but because a portrait of Catherine, Victor’s and William’s mother, was found in her pocket. This flimsy bit of evidence was construed to have been the motive for the murder of the child and Justine was found guilty despite her continued insistence that she is innocent as well as the insistence of the family. Justine herself knows the futility of her words as she steps on the witness stand: “God knows … how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me” (Shelley, 2004: 116). Unknown to all in the courtroom, Victor’s creature has killed the young boy and placed the portrait in the girl’s pocket as she slept, thus symbolizing both the incapacity of women to be heard as well as the ability of man’s technology to control utterly the fate of women. Despite this missing piece of knowledge, there is no attempt by the investigators of the crime to match the hand size of the prints around the boy’s neck to Justine’s hands. Even with Elizabeth’s pleading for her, Justine is convicted on little more than circumstantial evidence. Elizabeth, in her willingness to speak out against her elders, the male leaders of society and the rules of law, demonstrates the strong kind of character Shelley envisioned her own mother to have been. Elizabeth, much like Shelley herself, lost her mother as an infant and was entrusted to her maternal uncle, Victor’s father, to be raised like a daughter. Her mere description denotes her as a feminist before her time in a way that puts poor Justine to shame: “No one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one could submit with more grace than she did to constraint and caprice. Her imagination was luxuriant, yet her capability of application was great. Her person was the image of her mind” (Shelley, 2004: 54). As Victor’s love interest, Elizabeth is seen to acquire a healthy education from the Frankenstein household, although she does not attend school. She delivers a passionate appeal for the release of Justine, arguing strongly regarding the character and relationship Justine has shared with the family: “She was warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother … She had no temptation for such an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her; so much do I esteem and value her!” (Shelley, 2004: 118). Yet this, too, is misunderstood by the court as they form an even darker opinion of the girl on the stand and her extreme ingratitude, indicating how even strong women had little hope of making themselves heard. However, Shelley’s feminism didn’t necessarily replace women and men, instead, it balanced them. For example, it is Elizabeth who is seen to hold the family together when Victor’s mother dies, yet it is she who requires Victor’s assistance when William is murdered. This give-and-take support system is the kind of equal-yet-different feminism Shelley envisioned, in which neither sex was more important than the other, neither was constrained by particular roles or occupations, but each was essential to the overall health of the unit. Like Justine, Elizabeth is killed by the monster, but, perhaps because she is a stronger woman, the monster’s involvement in her death is more directly active, indicating the more purposeful male suppression of the female voice struggling to be heard. The creature is unable to exist within the world in which he has been released because he is neither male nor female. He is the only one of his kind and quickly comes to the realization that without a balancing influence, there is no means by which he will be able to find peace: “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley, 2004: 195). He has learned the necessity of the balancing influence of family, which is brought by the woman, by watching the De Lacy family after having been abandoned by his creator at the university and having struggled through the wilderness in ignorance. Within the greater society, the creature has even less chance of being heard than the female, as is proven when he attempts to converse with the blind De Lacy father yet is silenced by the screams of the De Lacy children upon their early arrival home. The creature of Frankenstein is not only a symbol of feminism in his actions, but is also a symbol in his mere existence. As the technologically produced, free-thinking and self-aware being that he is, he represents the concept of man’s science taking over the reproductive powers of women, supplanting the natural role and removing the feminine from the equation all together. This produces horrific results both physically and psychologically that quickly escalate much further out of control than could have been originally imagined. The monster’s role in the death of Justine as well as the murder of Elizabeth further emphasizes this concept of technology attempting to replace the functions of women, thus negating their importance to society. At the same time, Victor’s refusal to create a female for the monster reflects the general fear of men that women could not be adequately contained through any other means than destruction. Victor is the scientist who makes the whole story possible. As the character who determines to harness the power of life into the hands of man, Victor brings forth his great experiment in replacing the need for women. At the same time, he demonstrates why the need for women is so great. Although he creates the monster, he cannot bear to look upon him and becomes so ill following the creature’s animation that he requires long-term care by his friend Cherval before he is fit enough to travel: “By very slow degrees and with frequent relapses … I recovered. I remembered the first time I became capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared, and that the young buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window” (Shelley, 2004: 92), indicating the amount of time he spent convalescing. Like women in this time period, he is seen as having a weak constitution, yet unlike women, he is able to abandon his own creation. Although he indicates he is feminist minded in that he appreciates Elizabeth’s independent nature, he is equally incapable of listening to women, as is demonstrated by his inability to listen to her concerns on their wedding day: “Something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us” (Shelley, 2004: 257). Unlike real women, however, who are never heard within the novel, the creature is able to prove himself both powerful and intelligent to Victor through the murder of William and the framing of Justine and is finally given a real chance to speak. Throughout the novel, Shelley illustrates the importance of an equal yet different conception of the male-female divide even while she demonstrates how this idea remains far outside the realm of possibility within her own society. Women were not given a chance to attain their equal status because of the fear men felt at their lack of control over female powers. However, without the female influence, Shelley demonstrated, society would be incapable of producing favorable results. Technology is shown to be man’s attempt to harness the female in even tighter constraints even while the women were shouting to be released so as to contribute more fully to the benefit of all. Through characters such as Justine, Shelley tried to indicate how women were effectively silenced for no other reason than they were women. Other characters, such as Elizabeth, became snapshots of the highest level an independent woman could hope to attain in this society – a woman who remained educated only at home and heard only when convenient to men. The creature becomes not only man’s attempts to supplant and destroy women but also the object lesson of the evils of such attempts as the balance of nature is upset. The importance of striking a balance of the equally important yet still fundamentally different woman with the still important man is what Victor finally learns in the end, although it cost him all he had to learn it. In the end, Victor argues in favor of feminism, urging his fellow man not to make the same disastrous mistakes he’s made in his attempts to further reduce the importance of women to the overall society. Works Cited Bristol Women’s Studies Group. Half the Sky: An Introduction to Womens Studies. London: Virago, 1979. Haslanger, Sally & Tuana, Nancy. “Topics in Feminism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. April 20, 2007 Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley. New York and London: Routledge, 1989 Pabst-Kastner, Charlotte. “A Biographical Sketch of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: 1797-1851.” The Victorian Web. (January 24, 2003). April 20, 2007 Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860. London: Macmillan, 1985. Shelley, Mary. The Essential Frankenstein. Leonard Wolf (Ed.). New York: Simon & Schuester, 2004. Wolf, Leonard (Ed.). “Introduction.” In Shelley, Mary. The Essential Frankenstein. Leonard Wolf (Ed.). New York: Simon & Schuester, 2004. Read More