Feminism in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Though it really doesn’t look it at first glance, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is edged with hints of the feminist viewpoint. Devoid of any strong female characters, Shelly inserted into Victor Frankenstein’s tale the role that society expects women to play, and shows the idealized powerless female of the romantic era. The first sign is when Caroline Beaufort marries Alphonse Frankenstein for his money, for their society had made it nigh impossible for a woman to be able to provide for herself. It sees women as possessions for men to protect; seen in Victor’s phrases, “She presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift.” and, “Her whom I fondly prized before every other gift or fortune.” But Frankenstein doesn’t think of Elizabeth when his monster declares that, “I shall be with you on your wedding night,” and focuses instead on protecting himself, unwittingly leaving her to his creation. He doesn’t listen to Elizabeth’s various entreaties, virtually ignores her while working on his monster and anything else, and shows little or no consideration for her throughout the novel. Adding to the powerlessness bestowed on them, the women of Frankenstein are portrayed as good, angelic characters, and Victor refuses to trust Elizabeth with the secret of his creation, thinking that she cannot handle it and that in her "innocence", will refuse to believe it possible of him to have done. Most every female entrant into the storyline is a passive woman who suffers calmly and then expires, from Caroline Beaufort to Justine Moritz and even to Frankenstein’s aborted female “monster”, with none really attempting to delay their own deaths, the complete opposite of the feminist idea of women. Mary Shelley was greatly influenced by her mother and her feminist ideas, though in Frankenstein she chooses against showing the strength of women. Frankenstein is not a blatantly feminist novel as some are inclined to think, but rather an ironic portrayal of women for the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, for she shows them instead as weak, exhibiting to the audience how things ought not to be.