In her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft commented that “the education which women now receive scarcely deserves the name” (109). Less than thirty years later, her daughter, Mary Shelley, would write a novel that tells the story of a monster and his creator, which appears to contradict her mother’s work with its variety of weak female characters. However, on closer inspection, Frankenstein has a more intriguing story to tell. Abandoned by his creator, the monster must depend upon his own resources in order to educate himself; likewise, women of the time often found their education abandoned by society, and were forced to take matters in their own hands. Keeping this parallel in mind, the disgustingly weak Frankenstein women represent what was socially expected of women at the time, while the monster represents the only alternative available: self education. That the monster murders all of the Frankenstein women is symbolic of the efforts of educated women to undermine the severely limiting expectations traditionally placed upon them.�
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth century philosopher and an important contemporary of Mary Wollstonecraft, states in his book, Emile:�
In the union of the sexes, each alike contributes to the common end though in different ways… One should be strong and active, the other weak and passive; one must necessarily have both the power and the will, it is sufficient for the other to offer little resistance. (Jean-Jacques)�
Rousseau’s view concerning the expected frailty of women was a commonly held belief in society. Despite the attitude of the times, modern feminists have expressed disappointment with the weak women in Frankenstein (Youngquist 341). The disappointment stems from high expectations that Mary Shelley would have inherited her mother’s radical feminism. Despite the Wollstonecraft legacy, however, the Frankenstein women are undeniably weak. At each instance in which trouble arises, the women are helpless to act. Upon learning of the young William’s death, Elizabeth, Frankenstein’s adopted sister and intended bride, “fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty” (Shelley 70). Another adopted daughter of the family reacts in a similar fashion to the news: “[T]he morning on which the murder of poor William had been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed for several days” (Shelley 76). Justine is accused of William’s murder, and the women in the Frankenstein family are completely helpless to defend her without Victor Frankenstein. Upon his return, Elizabeth suggests that all will be made well with his presence: “You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless Justine” (Shelley 77). The Frankenstein women are utterly dependent on Victor for their very existence – the passive counterparts that Rousseau described.�
Rousseau’s views on the education of women were no less limiting: “Once it is demonstrated that man and woman are not, and should not be constituted the same, either in character or in temperament, it follows that they should not have the same education” (Jean-Jacques). True to form, the female characters in Frankenstein show themselves to be nothing more than what Wollstonecraft terms “fashionably educated” (Thoughts 32). Vanessa D. Dickerson, in her article “The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, points out that “the one instance Elizabeth takes up her pen to write is possible only when Victor, violently ill, is �forbidden to write – to hold a pen'” (86). In actuality, there is one other time when Elizabeth writes a letter to Frankenstein; however, just like during Frankenstein’s illness, only a crisis – this time, Victor being charged with his friend Henry Clerval’s murder – could bring about this miracle. There is little other evidence to suggest the formal education of the women in Frankenstein; evidently, their intellectual abilities stopped with what society and their stature necessitated.�
Rousseau did believe in educating women, but the kind of education he promoted is hardly what feminists would support:�
[T]he whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to council them, to console them, and to make life agreeable and sweet to them – these are the duties of women at all times, and should be taught them from their infancy. (Jean-Jacques)�
Rousseau’s view requires women to enslave themselves to men – even their education exists solely for furthering the men in their lives. The women in Frankenstein most certainly follow this model. After the deaths of William and Justine, Elizabeth tells Victor, “These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are… Have we lost the power of rendering you happy?” (Shelley 90). Despite Elizabeth’s own suffering, she places Victor’s happiness before hers – indeed, she reduces her own value merely to her capability of making him happy again. In this manner, Frankenstein drags about the women loyal to him by the results of his rash creation, until every one of them sacrifices their lives to his folly.�
It is perhaps with women such as these in mind that Mary Wollstonecraft criticized the “false system of education” provided for women (Vindication 85). However, Wollstonecraft also believed that women could redeem themselves, despite their lack of opportunity: “Very frequently, when the education has been neglected, the mind improves itself, if it has leisure for reflection, and experience to reflect on” (Thoughts 36). Similarly, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she mentions the she knows “a few women, who, by accident, or following a strong bent of nature, have acquired a portion of knowledge superiour to that of the rest of their sex” (109). Wollstonecraft evidently promoted self-education as a means of circumventing society’s limitations, and it is even feasible that she counts herself (and, later, her daughter) among these “few women”.�
The monster’s method of education in Shelley’s Frankenstein parallels the situations Wollstonecraft alluded to. When the monster meets his creator at last, there must be an explanation of how he came so far in the world; to this end, Shelley creates a whole history for the monster, in which he educates himself by eavesdropping on the De Lacey family. At first, the monster strives only to understand language: “I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds, and was able to pronounce them” (Shelley 109). With the discovery of spoken language, however, comes the mystery of written language: “I conjectured…that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend these also” (Shelley 110). The monster’s desire to be educated could be viewed as the outpouring of Shelley’s own experiences – her own passions that drove her to educate herself. A passion must find a means, however, which the monster finds when Safie, the Arabian woman, comes to live with the De Laceys: “Presently I found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she was endeavouring to learn their language; and the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end” (Shelley 114). By stealing his education, “he is thus placed in the position of the woman who, like Eve or Mary Shelley, eavesdrops on the conversations of men” (Collings 289). The theft succeeds, and the monster reports, “While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters as it was taught to the stranger; and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight” (Shelley 115). Obviously, Shelley values the payoff of education as being great enough to excuse the means with which the oppressed acquire it.�
The monster’s education is an intellectual journey, which the monster starts from a low point: “Initially Frankenstein’s creature is…passive, childish, and helpless as the female figures in the novel” (Dickerson 88). The monster begins his education from much the same starting point as a woman would begin hers: superficially minded, without the enlightenment to think or act otherwise. Through education, however, the monster acquires more than just language and knowledge – he acquires the ability to understand and analyze his world. As Nancy Yousef explains, in her essay “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy”,�
His acquisition of language allows him to follow the cottagers’ readings of history and discourses on the “strange system of human society,” but his new cultural literacy leads him to understand that he has no such history and belongs to no society. (219)�
The monster’s intellectual journey and his discovery of the true nature of his world parallel a woman’s education and the ensuing realization of the exclusion of women from society. This understanding must have been frustrating for women like Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft; it is conceivable that Shelley used the monster’s intellectual journey to vent her own frustrations.�
An analysis of the text and the insights of others establishes that the weak women in Frankenstein represent society’s expectations of women at the time, while the monster represents the efforts of a female minority to educate themselves. With this in mind, it takes on a special meaning that the monster destroys the weak, traditional women in the novel. The monster is indirectly responsible for Justine’s death, as he performed the murder of William, which she was charged with and executed for. Elizabeth’s death was wholly the monster’s doing; he murdered her on the night of her wedding to Victor Frankenstein. All of the weak women in the novel die as a result of the monster, while the strong, educated women remain unharmed – primarily Safie, although Agatha De Lacey survives as well.�
Safie is an incredibly strong female character, offsetting the weak women in the novel. She and the monster are paralleled, as both are strangers who don’t speak the language, and both take control of their lives through their education (Dickerson 89). According to Charles E. Robinson’s essay “A Mother’s Daughter: An Intersection of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, Safie’s name means “Wisdom” (134). Therefore, even Safie’s name indicates her elevated status in the novel. Dickerson notes that “Safie bodies forth in a way that the other women in the novel do not… [S]he is spirited, independent” (88). Safie’s survival indicates a significant difference in her character, as opposed to the other women in the novel. The monster, representing the self-education of women, destroys the insipid, useless, ultra-feminine women characteristic of the expectations of society, but Safie is spared – her education and strength of character sets her apart from the rest.�
With the exception of Safie, the women in Shelley’s Frankenstein perfectly fit Rousseau’s description of the period’s expectations of women. Dickerson observes that “the women in Victor’s life may all be collapsed into one, so similar and interconnected are they” (85). The impotence and extraordinary sameness of these women works as a backdrop for the educated monster, whose experiences are paralleled with Safie’s. According to Collings, “If Safie represents woman as she is accepted into language and the family, the monster embodies woman as she is excluded from the world of images and words” (290). The monster’s only alternative, like woman, is to procure his own education. He experiences the disgust and hatred of society, much as educated women suffered ridicule; he reacts by turning his full destructive powers on those forces that would destroy him. The Frankenstein family, possibly representing the majority of society, becomes the object of the monster’s revenge; Safie and the De Lacey family, the exception to society’s rule, escape unharmed. The monster’s revenge, when viewed in this context, becomes symbolic of the goal of feminists: to undermine society’s stereotypical expectations of women through defiant self-education. Victor Frankenstein, representing the values of society, does his utmost to smother the uprising, but in the end the monster and his education outlive Frankenstein. The victory is a bitter one, however: “[N]ow crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal,” the monster says (Shelley 213). In his thirst for revenge, the monster neglected the lessons of humanity inherent in education. Shelley’s message is clear: the goal is for women to overcome society’s limitations through education, rather than trying to forcefully destroy society’s values.
Collings, David. “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Ideology.” Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. 280-295.�
Dickerson, Vanessa D. “The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Journal of Popular Culture 27.3 (1993): 79-91.�
Robinson, Charles E. “A Mother’s Daughter: An Intersection of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”� Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives. Ed. Helen M. Buss, D. L. Macdonald, and Anne McWhir. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001. 127-138.�
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. Ed. Janet M. Todd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.�
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. Ed. Janet M. Todd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.�
Youngquist, Paul. “Frankenstein: The Mother, the Daughter, and the Monster.” Philological Quarterly 70.3 (1991): 339-359.�
Yousef, Nancy. “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy.” Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History 63.2 (2002): 197-226.
Reference:
Collings, David. “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Ideology.” Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. 280-295. Dickerson, Vanessa D. “The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Journal of Popular Culture 27.3 (1993): 79-91. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762).” chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/470/ Robinson, Charles E. “A Mother’s Daughter: An Intersection of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives. Ed. Helen M. Buss, D. L. Macdonald, and Anne McWhir. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001. 127-138. Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. Ed. Janet M. Todd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. Ed. Janet M. Todd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Youngquist, Paul. “Frankenstein: The Mother, the Daughter, and the Monster.” Philological Quarterly 70.3 (1991): 339-359. Yousef, Nancy. “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy.” Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History 63.2 (2002): 197-226.
