Cassandra Lagunas
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) has long been considered a revolutionary novel because of its feminist, scientific and moral values. The mother figure, at first glance a minor presence, represents these values and serves as a catalyst for Victor Frankenstein’s moral corruption. Shelley’s mother figure is embodied by Caroline Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza, who serve to represent all women of the Romantic era. Through these characters, Shelley emphasizes the maternal instinct inside all women, as well as the male characters’ unacknowledged need for them outside the domestic area. Shelley explores the importance of a mother by subjecting her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, to the presence and then tragic absence of a mother figure. Furthermore, the shortage of women in Victor’s isolated college setting during his years of studying causes him to detach morally. Thus, the moral corruption presented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein stems from the absence of a mother figure and represents the ramifications of the lack of women outside the domestic sphere.
In the novel, Victor Frankenstein’s life is presented as idyllic until the death of his mother. After this loss, Victor transforms his ideal life into a tragedy through secluded academic study and a fascination with the occult. Victor becomes consumed by his ambition to assemble and then revive a dead body, leading his life into a dark spiral. There are parallels between Frankenstein’s protagonist and its author. Like Victor, Mary Shelley experienced the great loss of a mother. However, Shelley lost her mother after only ten days, whereas Victor has the advantage of growing up with a mother for twenty years. Shelley was instead raised by her stepmother and father, causing a life of instability (“Romanticism” 708). Although she never had the opportunity to know her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley grew up surrounded by people who spoke of her mother’s involvement in the feminist movement. Wollstonecraft notoriously proposed the then-radical idea that women should be treated equally to men. In her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the foundational texts of the feminist movement, Wollstonecraft also states, “Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence […] that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize [ …] which then leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire” (376). Shelley’s mother disapproved of women who conformed to the childlike treatment of male society. Wollstonecraft also disliked the unrealistic expectations that men set for women, causing them to become completely fixated on the prospects of marriage and family rather than academic study. This important legacy that Wollstonecraft left for her daughter is manifest in Frankenstein’s Caroline and Elizabeth.
Mary Wollstonecraft preferred women to strive for a life involving academic study rather than the domestic life that society would have them pursue. As Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Shelley might have been inclined to create female characters fulfilling these views, characters that are strong-minded and independent. Instead, Shelley’s protagonist Victor, a man who struggles with personal desires and moral choices, becomes endlessly fascinating and complex, while secondary characters in comparison seem dull and unimportant. Such secondary characters include Caroline Beaufort and Elizabeth Lavenza, who are depicted very similarly. When Caroline, the matriarch of the family, dies, Elizabeth, an orphan raised in the Frankenstein household, must become the new mother figure. Victor observes, “She consoled me, amused her uncle, instructed my brothers, and I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself” (26). It is evident that Shelley creates Elizabeth as a self-sacrificing woman who reflects a motherly nature, one who is the opposite of Wollstonecraft’s ideal woman.
Not only does Elizabeth replace Caroline in the role of matriarch but she becomes a reincarnation of Caroline. Some wonder why Shelley seems to contradict her mother’s views by creating one-dimensional female characters. As George Levine points out, “These kinds of redoublings are characteristic of the whole novel. […] Every story seems a variation on every other” (313). As Levine notes, Elizabeth and Caroline do have similar characteristics and oftentimes seem like the same person, but this is not a fault of Shelley’s writing. Wollstonecraft might have written these characters as opposites, distinct and uniquely important. However, Shelley’s nearly identical characters, realistic to the setting, show, perhaps even more than Wollstonecraft’s characters would, the vital influence of women within the world. By writing Elizabeth and Caroline as “doubles,” Shelley supports Wollstonecraft’s views by demonstrating that daughters like Elizabeth were raised, without consideration of their own happiness or needs, to be support systems for their families.
Shelley creates Elizabeth and Caroline as “sacrificers” to emphasize the females’ natural response to nurture through motherly instinct, an instinct that allows them to become emotional outlets. Caroline’s death is an act of sacrifice for the ill Elizabeth, whom she deems as her child: “During [Elizabeth’s] confinement, many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. […] [Caroline] could no longer debar herself from her society and entered her chamber long before the danger of infection was past” (25). Caroline’s death is considered honorable because she risks her life for her child, something, according to Shelley, a mother would naturally want to do. Similarly, Elizabeth’s own death is an act of sacrifice for Victor, toward whom she acts motherly. Her murder by the creature also serves as the final blow to Victor’s unwillingness to be accountable for his creation, as he has no choice but to reveal his actions to the authorities.
These two female characters allow the reader to clearly differentiate between the two worlds that Shelley presents, the worlds of men and women. Men, raised to thrive in an analytical setting, can be free of emotions and feelings (Mellor 356-357). In Shelley’s world, where men are accustomed to work in an emotionless world, women, with or without children, are expected to develop a giving, loving, “motherly” nature. Consequently, women become more in tune with their emotions than men. Women are then obliged to become emotional outlets for their families, leading men to be emotionally dependent on women and, as they are less adept emotionally than women, more susceptible to moral corruption. After Caroline dies, no one has authority over Victor other than his father. Because his father is a man, and therefore lacks a woman’s emotional intelligence, he apparently does not consider the emotional toll of Victor’s two-year isolation from his family. In this way, Shelley presents the ramifications of women’s absence and the lack of feminine influence in work settings.
Mary Shelley was fortunate to have parents who encouraged her literary ambitions, but most other women during the Romantic era did not enjoy these same advantages. Shelley realized that women had had to prove themselves as equal to men for centuries, just as her own mother had done. Still, unlike men, women were denied access to universities and careers. Victor’s absence from Elizabeth demonstrates that women’s presence in educational settings would prove beneficial to both women and men. Anne K. Mellor notes how women served as emotional outlets for men, and as “a consequence of this sexual division of labor, masculine work is kept outside of the domestic realm; hence intellectual activity is segregated from emotional activity” (356). Men were not permitted to be emotional in business outside of the home because such behavior was considered womanly and weak. However, in the domestic area, the woman’s “workplace,” emotion in men was permissible, as women served to help their husbands express his feelings.
Victor’s isolation at his university is connected to his mother’s death, an event that makes him desperate to defy death. Eventually, he succeeds in creating a new being from dead body parts and giving it life. He is horrified by his accomplishment, suddenly realizing that he had not considered the consequences of his success. However, he abandons his creation, focusing on himself and never considering the Creature’s feelings or needs. The Creature is then forced to fend for himself in a society that would harass him for his appearance, ultimately resulting in his own isolation and misery and leading him to avenge himself by killing most of Victor’s family and friends. Victor’s tragic story would have ended differently if a woman were allowed outside the domestic realm and to be present at his university. Unlike Caroline and Elizabeth, Victor does not sacrifice his life, nor even his reputation, for his creation. His irresponsibility and lack of empathy towards his creation is evidence of this man’s inability to contend with emotions without the influence of women. Victor’s father demonstrates a similar lack of emotional intelligence when earlier in the novel he fails to bring Victor home from his isolation and when he does not fully explain to him the dangers of necromancy. After he dismisses the books that had caught Victor’s interest as “sad trash,” Victor observes, “If, instead of this remark, my father had taken pains to explain to me […] I should certainly have thrown [those books] aside” (22). His father’s insensitivity is the beginning of Victor’s downfall, demonstrating that men’s lack of emotional intelligence can lead to disastrous results.
Mary Shelley conveys the importance of acknowledging the woman behind the man, or in this case, the mother behind the father. The father figure is a significant theme in Shelley’s Frankenstein, as Victor Frankenstein’s relationship with his Creation is the central point of the story, overshadowing the more subtle mother figures. More than that, Shelley indicates there is no denying the motherly instinct of all women. There is a softness and a gentleness inhabiting most women, a statement that Shelley’s mother might have disputed because these qualities are often associated with weakness, but Shelley proves that there is strength in emotions, too. She turns society’s views on women’s disadvantages into advantages disproving their limitations. Many failed to recognize the integral roles of women within their families and society. With her novel, Shelley gives her audience insight into the tragic life of a man without a woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levine, George. “Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism.” Frankenstein, 2nd ed., Hunter, pp. 311-317.
Mellor, Anne K. “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein.” Frankenstein, 2nd ed., Hunter, pp. 355–368.
“Romanticism.” Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements, edited by Ira Mark Milne, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2009, pp. 705-743. Gale eBooks, https://link-gale-com.ccc.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX3279300036/GVRL?u=chic13716&sid=GVRL&xid=0aab00a0.
Hunter, J. Paul, ed. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 2nd ed., Norton, 2012.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Selections from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, vol. 1, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 3rd ed., Norton, 2007, pp. 373–390.