if you have read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, please help! I really need help.. thanks!!?

Question

how is the feminist approach useful in understanding Frankenstein? (on page 274): Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein written by Anne K. Mellor)

can you give me some ideas please. any help would be appreaciated.. best answer gets 10 points. if only 1 person reply, i'll give that person 10 points.. thanks in advance for your help!! write as much as you like. i like to read all the responses. have a good night!!

Answer 1

Oh boy... That is a toughy. I read Frankenstein several years ago and I loved it. The book was very well written. I suppose you should think about the fact that the book was written by Mary Shelley in a period when women had few civil rights. The women of that era were not independent. They weren't allowed to really think, write or express themsleves. In a way The Monster in Frankenstein is a representation of oppressed women in the 19th century. The Monster has feelings, needs, emotions yet no one understands him and everyone judges him. Pay particular attention to the scene where the monster encouters a blind person who actually treats him well. A parallel could be drawn to women looking to be treated equally but in order to accomplish that their gender would have to be ignored. I hope this gives you some good ideas. Good Luck!

Answer 2

Shelley's Frankenstein is the author's alterego, producing a creature free from the defilement of sexual procreation and the taint of mortality.That a male without sexual contact can reproduce is a feminist fantasy, for the laboratory's replacing the womb frees woman from the constraints of the body. Justine and Elizabeth escape the defilement of sexual procreation, dying sacrificial virgins and therefore pure; they, along with Saphie and Agatha are reflections of the Ideal Woman, biologically immaculate because uncontaminated by sexual know-ledge and motherhood. The book's female characters are "such an insipid lot" (349) because they are not characters at all, but mere symbols, sacrificial virgins and dead mothers who must atone for Victor Frankenstein's usurpation of procreation.

Answer 3

Tell your instructor that the e-book used to be written for the period of a tryst among Mary & Percy Shelley and George Gordon. It used to be created out of guilt from the loss of life of her youngster and in the best way that it used to be written, considering that the 3 of them have been NOTORIOUS Opium customers... Rent the film Haunted Summer or Gothic and you'll be able to see what I imply. The suggestion of Good and Evil is constantly one among my favourite topics considering that it's so very relative. Was the Monster surely evil considering that he used to be created and as a result lacked a soul? Well, that used to be requested of the reader considering that of the truth that Percy and Lord Byron each have been training athiests... Latter day Libertines if you're going to... or have been the villagers who hunted the "monster" the evil ones?

Answer 4

The answer you seek is quite simple. The Creature went to Frankenstein asking him to create him a mate - a female. Frankenstein tried - in fact he started - but finally decided against it and destroyed the female - making the idea of a female out of the reach of the Creature forever. In return, the Creature told Victor that he would be with him on his wedding day, and indeed killed Elizabeth, Victor's bride, before they could consumate the marriage. Therefore the female remained out of reach to both of them.

I totally disagree with the person who said Frankenstein is not a femininist book. Mary Shelley's mother, the author Mary Wollstonecroft, died in childbirth. She bled to death after having Mary. Frankenstein is very much a book about that incident and the incidents of two other women in Mary Shelley's life who died - her sister who killed herself with laudenum while having a torrid affair with Shelley's friend Lord Byron and Percy's wife who drowned herself. Mary Shelley, only a young 18 at the time very much saw herself as someone with survivors guilt and in a way as The Creature herself. People around her died. She lost her own child too. So she viewed herself as both the creator of life (Frankenstein) and the taker away of life who wasnt nurtured by its parent (The Creature).

The entire concept of nature vs. nurture is generally a feminine issue = most mothers are the nurturers. Her father, the author William Godwin basically turned her over to female family members to raise after the death of her mother.

Incidently, Mary Shelley came from very good stock when it came to being a femininist - Mary Wollstonecroft herself
wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and Vindication of the Rights of Women - both decidedly femininist works. She was also a single mother - never marrying the father of Mary's older sister. She also urged her own sister to leave her husband and viewed the future as a feminine utopia. Mary Shelley ran off with Percy when she was only 16.

There is plenty about Frankenstein and indeed about it's author that is femininist. Pax - C.

Answer 5

Ugh, college ideologies. Feminism in Frankenstein, sorry, but that's not what this one's about. It's so ridiculous that everything has to be subjected to some school of interpretation, no matter if that is the point of the book or not.

Good luck, cause again, Frankenstein, although written by a woman, is not about feminism.

Answer 6

The text addresses the fear of feminine procreation
View and Listen to the live talk in an actual classroom and pick this answer.

Here it is:

http://lectures.eserver.org/1021/Frankenstein_120k.mov



Get more audio-visual in the link below.
Good luck

Answer 7

Honestly, I did not read this book, but I found some links about it, perhaps it helps you:
http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/frankenstein
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/frankenstein
Good luck to you!