Gender Role and Feminism in Shelley’s Frankenstein Annotated Bibliography

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has different implications and studies on gothic features, parenthood, and the question of life and death. Some studies also noted the immense sense of gender roles discussed in Frankenstein. This paper will discuss the implications of gender structures in the novel and find its representation in the current gender views. The research question will be: how did Mary Shelley identify gender roles and the importance of feminism in her work Frankenstein? This paper will review the feministic representations in Frankenstein and evaluate studies based on them. There are different gender constructions that Mary used in her work that represents the perspective on the role of man and woman. For example, Melore (2018) notes how nature is identified Mary to be female. Natural reproduction is also said to be stolen since the creation of Frankenstein reduces the role of females. To review Victor’s viewpoint of the female role, it is also essential to review his character. As Bowta & Puluhulawa (2018) noted, there is a preliminary linear narrative of Victor’s decision-making that led to the chaos of events and also changed his personality from being a positive character to having opposite selfish and cruel views.

The same can be said for the social deconstruction, as while the author assumes to have specific gender roles, it also criticizes the patriarchal structure of society. Aalto (2020) defines three main aspects that are criticized in Frankenstein, which are women’s marginalization, their exclusion from social functions, and the egoism of the patriarchal system. This paper will analyze how the author represents flaws of patriarchal society from the viewpoint of a female in a male-centered world. It will also focus on these three aspects by comparing them with the text citations. The male-dominated society is also described through the character of Victor, who stands as the main point of narration and brings horrible and cruel actions but refuses to take responsibility for them (Mellor, 2019). The paper will examine the necessity of reconstruction of feminism in the patriarchal society and the critics of gender roles in the work. The article’s central thesis will stand by the following: Frankenstein embodies the main criticism led by feminism and evaluates society from the perspective of a male-centered system and female exclusion. As Frankenstein correlated the connection between females and nature, it can also be connected from the perspective of ecofeminism, the explain nature from the standpoint of its relation to human beings (Cheng, 2021). Through the perspective of the connection of nature and females, its expulsion and marginalization in male-centered society, as well as revealing gender roles, Mary Shelley creates a detailed depiction of the natural world society that fails to recognize its flaws and correct them.

Works Cited

Aldiss, Brian W. Frankenstein Unbound, Random House, 1973.

Aalto, Linda. Marginal Women and Absent Mothers in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 2020, 20 p.

Bloom, Clive. Gothic Horror: A Guide for Students and Readers. 2nd ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Bowta, Femilia, & Puluhulawa, Yulan. “Deconstructive Analysis of Main Character in Frankenstein Novel by Mary Shelley.” British Journal Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris, vol. 7, no. 1, 2018, pp. 60-71.

Cambra-Badii, Irene et al. “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus: a Classic Novel to Stimulate the Analysis of Complex Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Sciences.” BMC Med Ethics, vol. 22, no. 17, 2021. Web.

Cambra-Badii, Irene et al. “The Ethical Interest of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus: A Literature Review 200 Years After Its Publication”. Sci Eng Ethics, no. 26, pp 2791–2808, 2020. Web.

Cheng, Jiaming. “An Analysis of Ecofeminism in Frankenstein”. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange, 2021.

Gigante, Denise. “Facing the Ugly: The Case of ‘Frankenstein.’” ELH, vol. 67, no. 2, 2000, pp. 565–87. JSTOR, Web.

Kate Bomford. “Critical or Creative? The Creature Writes to Victor Frankenstein”. Changing English, vol. 29, no. 4, 2022, pp. 421-439.

Martin, Kristen. “In Want of Keeping: Painting and the Sympathetic Imagination of Frankenstein”. Eighteenth Century Fiction, vol. 32, no. 4, 2020, pp. 599-618.

Mellor, Anne K. Frankenstein, Gender, and Mother Nature. Frankenbook, 2018. Web.

Miles, Robert. Gothic Writing, 1750-1820: A Genealogy. 2nd ed., Manchester University Press, 2002.

Morris, David B. The Culture of Pain. [Pbk. rpt. ed., 1993]., University of California Press, 1993.

Rauch, Alan. “The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 34, no. 2, 1995, pp. 227–53. Web.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. The original 1818 text. 3rd ed. Edited by Kathleen Scherf, and David Macdonald. Broadview Press, 2012.

Sherwin, Paul. “Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe.” PMLA, vol. 96, no. 5, 1981, pp. 883-903. Print.