The Role Of Women In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the title itself presents a man’s story. In the time and place this story takes place, women are seen as unequal to men and thus that ideology is reflected throughout the story. Victor Frankenstein, the narrator, presents women on a different scale than that of men. The females, who in reality place a big emphasis on the story as a whole, are reflected as trifling individuals. Throughout the book the women of the story are victimized and proven to serve merely as male companions. It is not coincidence that Mary Shelley, whom wrote the book, originally submitted it anonymously in correlation to the time period. It is not coincidence that Victor Frankenstein outcast the women characters in the novel much like Frankenstein (the book) was outcast by society of the time being written by a woman author. Frankenstein is dominated by the voices of the male characters while the women’s voices faintly exist at all.
In following, women in Frankenstein are present for the sole purpose to be companions for the men that help push the men’s version of the story along. The directors of the story are: Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton, and Frankenstein’s monster. At no time in the story do women speak directly. In Elizabeth’s letter, being one of the longest times Elizabeth speaks in the novel, that Victor received as him and his
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After all the narration was by: Victor, the monster, and Walton- all men. The woman were merely present in the story to serve as male companions that help push ‘their’ story along. Women in this story didn’t even get equal voice portrayal. Though it was clear that the men needed women to be happy they still enacted to dis-empower women. Unfairly the women were victimized throughout the entire novel and when they literally all died the men felt their absence hard. Frankenstein proved to be a story of inequality, denigration, and loss