Sunday, March 28, 2010

Why Does Shelly Write About Everything Her Mother Fought Against?

A very faded theme that i have notice through out this story is Shellys need to create passive female characters. Shellys mother we learned was an active femanist and she creates these extremly passive females. Not only are these women passive they all die for he sake of a man. The first female that we see is his mother Caroline and she sacrificly dies for her daughter whom she adopted as a "present" for her son. The daughter gets sick with Scarlet fever and lives through it where as the mother passes away. The next person you see die for a Frankenstein man is Justine she is executed for the death of William Frankenstein where it was do Victor and his creation. The next "woman" that is subjected to death is the female monster she is aborted becasuse Victor fears he will not be able to control her. An dthe final female that is subject to death becasue of Victor frankenstein is Elizabeth. She waits and waits for Victor to come around is murdred by the monster. I believe that shelly created these oassiver and deadly females because she is attempting to prove that men in her time are submissive to women. The feel that the women are replaceable and are un needed. Another point of view i see is originally the book was going to be puiblished as Percy Shellys work so maybe she created it with these passive women so it would pass as his work and be published. There are many possible interpretations of why Mary Shelly created these passive women. My belief is that she was continuing her mothers work and showing what terrible and horrifying things men can do to women and not even think twice about it. Or what terrible situations and danger men put women in. I think that this is a major underlying theme that many people do not notice or give much thought to and really should.

1 comment:

  1. This is a good point and I agree with this. While reading the book I did not realize this theme, but looking back it is very clear that all of the female characters are passive and do not stand up for themselves. Also, Elizabeth writes to Victor and says that she does not really want to get married, but she will get married if Victor still wants to. Victor decides that he does still want to marry her so she goes along with it and does not stand up for herself.

    ReplyDelete