Brief introduction to Frankenstein

 In Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein she had given more important to male characters but they just suffer from their power and knowledge, whereas to the women character she portrayed them as passive, disposable and serving, and women are useful function. This may have been caused by the time period in which she wrote: one in which females considered inferior to males. Female characters like Savile, Elizabeth, Margaret, Agatha and even Lady Monster providing nothing but a channel of action to the male characters in the novel. Events and actions happened to them, usually for the sake of teaching a male character a lesion or igniting an emotion within him. Each of the women has serves some specific role in the novel.

    

Condition of women in Nineteenth century:-

While reading Frankenstein one can understand the patriarchal nineteenth century. It was social norm where men are part of public sector and women for domestic. Deformity of Monster expresses obstacles in a culture, in which feminine self-expression is very much difficult. Shelley, writing in the first half of the 19^th century, was in a period in which a women “was conditioned to think she needed a man’s help”(one critic). Men such as Victor Frankenstein and Walton endeavor on quest in search of knowledge, happiness, personal fulfillment and experience. Men take on the role of scientist, explorer and merchant whereas women were confined to the house and kept outside of the male public sector, where the intellectual activities was abundant, in that time women were considered weak, sexless, and treated as material things.

 Even in our country like India, at the present time women’s condition is no better than this.  

Gender and Sex:-  

 Gender and sex are different things from each other. Gender is what is based on the biological difference, and it is created by nature we have no control over it. Whereas the sex is men made thing and we created the difference among male and female, among girl and boy. And in this term women has been suffering from long time.

           Shelley has presented fragmented psyche of men and their external action is the subject of behavioral psychology. She has presented intangible character especially male characters, and it is what she thought about/ or has the image of male in her mind, she has presented in the novel.

         The creation of the Monster by Victor Frankenstein is very badly reflected the ugliness his mind, we can say that it is the ugliness of victors mind that comes to physical existence through the creation of Monster, what it called in scientific language the anima personality. But both either Victor or the Monster in reality created by Marry Shelley, and it is her thinking, her perspective, her point of view, how she looks at the men, as ugly, wicked, hostile, vicious. It may be said that it is the reflection of her society that she has presented in her novel. As R.J. Rees says ”literature is the mirror of the society”.

           Though the novel is written by women author she could not give enough justice to female characters in her novel because of the patriarchal structure of the society and even of language. Even she herself could not keep aloof from this structure. That’s why she had to encoded women’s voice within the structure of it. Though written by woman novelist but there is no change in the language and even in the presentation

Female characters in the novel:-

There are three main female characters in the novel they are Elizabeth, Savile and Justine. The female characters are very weak in this novel, especially Elizabeth, Victor’s cousin/fiancé. She is portrayed as the perfect women especially after the death of Victor’s mother. She takes the place of the mother figure in the household. But just like all female characters in the story, her character has little substance. Victor’s character is described in detail, as is that of the Monster, and Henry Clerval. When Henry get kill, sympathy is really felt towards Victor, because he has just lost his lifetime friend. When Elizabeth is murdered, the reader finds it hard to connect with what Frankenstein is feeling. Elizabeth the main female character and Justine and Caroline are there to reflect the male characters. Professor Smith states in her essay that “women function not in their own right but rather as signals of and channels for men’s relations with other men.” This is especially clear when the Monster kills Elizabeth on their wedding night. The Monster is upset with Victor, so instead of hurting him, he kills his wife. Elizabeth is used as sort of ruler to measure the relationship between Victor and Monster.

Psychological level:- The structure of the novel is very extra ordinary, that present the mind of the Marry Shelley or rather woman, and that makes a novel psychological. Within the novel we can read/ study the mind of the characters like Victor, Monster and Walton and in other way we also can read the psychology of woman author, what kind of mental condition she has that enforced her to write such work/ descriptions. In other way she had taken revenge against the male dominant society by portraying them physically defect and mentally wicked. Dreams allow something to speak which is not normally present in the patriarchal course of things. Such a bringing to the surface of a troubling otherness, sometimes explicitly connected to the unconscious, has been described as an effect of women's writing.

The novel is directed towards Savile (Walton’s sister) a woman, who is both inside and outside of the narrative structure to whom victor is telling the story of his experience. The structure of the novel allows us to read the mind of three male characters. As the story starts with Robert Walton, there after forward by Victor Frankenstein who tells half of the story, and his narrative disrupted by Monster. So reader can get chance and even the role of the female in their life. We get three stories by three different narrator and that help us to study three male characters and importance of women in their life. And through the whole structure of the novel we read the mind of Marry Shelley. In adopting a male voice, the woman writer is given the opportunity to intervene from within, to become an alien presence that undermines the stability of the male voice. Three narrators of the novel, Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster, each of these men is an image of the others all are wandering creatures who are in some way deviant. Walton’s narrative was interrupted by an accidental entry of Victor whose story is insufficient since it is broken by faints, fevers, dreams, inexplicable silences that dislocate narrative sequence. Monster displaces Victor’s narrative in the middle of the novel. The three narratives are incomplete without each other. None of them is the center of the novel. Doubling and dislocation of the identity of man, that changing the shape of man can only result in the creation of monstrosity.