A Feminist Study Of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

As one of the brilliant early gothic novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has enjoyed long term popularity since its publication. With the development of Feminism, literary critics began to realize Mary Shelley’s feminist consciousness in Frankenstein in the 1970 s. Being an early female novelist, Mary Shelley fully presents female roles and female life in patriarchal society. With careful analysis of both the male and female characters in Frankenstein, this thesis aims at exploring Mary Shelley’s feminist consciousness and the artistic values in the novel.In the novel, Mary Shelley shows her appreciation of women and the great values of maternal nature and severely criticizes men’s arrogant pursuit driven by the ideology of patriarchy. In the novel, female characters are like brave, gentle, and kind angels, playing an irreplaceable role in men’s life. By contrast, male characters are desperately eager to become omnipotent benefactors to human beings. In fact, they are selfish and arrogant destroyers who make people suffer. Mary Shelley shows her affirmation of women’s virtues and positive roles in society. In the meantime, Mary Shelley severely criticizes the male outlook of value and life which cause tragedy. And she also strongly criticizes men’s negation of and indifference to women’s values. Besides, Mary Shelley expresses her great concern about and admiration of nature in the novel. She shows her recognition of the homogeneity of nature and women and her affirmation of values of nature. And those ideas are similar to the key viewpoints of today’s Ecofeminism. In the novel, nature is life-giving, providing everything necessary for life. Thanks for nature’s caring, human beings can survive and reproduce. Besides, in the novel, like a loving mother, nature takes care of her wandering “child”---the abandoned Monster, supplying him with necessities of life---- food and cottage. Like women, nature produces great influence on people’s life. People, especially men, can obtain consolation and happiness from nature.Mary Shelley is one of the early novelists with feminist views. And her masterpiece is of great literary values and plays an important role both in the Women’s Liberation Movement and in the development of both Feminism and Ecofeminism.