Subserviant Mistresses

Throughout the passage of Frankenstein a key theme is portrayed that goes against the values of Mary Shelley. A strong proponent of feminist views and ideas, Shelley argues against the whole entity of passive women. Yet she consistently uses these figures in order to illustrate the aggressiveness and abuse they must suffer because of the faults of Victor and his Creation. None of the women in the book are heroines or heavy-duty, independent women. Instead each of them serves a particular purpose whether it be scapegoat or an exemplar of good, feminine virtue and wisdom. One could fairly argue that the female role during the course of the novel is to be obedient, subservient, and even as a sex object. Several connotations in nature construe also emphasize such ideas as illustrated by Victor’s exclamation—“I pursued nature to her hiding places.” The first theme of domestic women is described through Justine’s character. She epitomizes the idea of women as innocent and young, but also subjective to the torments and faults of men. She is a primary subject that also remains calm despite the fact that her death is soon approaching. She has an almost flippant attitude about her unjust death as described clearly—“I do not fear to die that pang is past. God raises my weaknesses, and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in [patience] to the will of Heaven (Shelley 59)!” Although this quote could possibly argued to exemplify Justine’s courage and strength, it more strongly renders the idea that Justine does not fight against her fate even if it means being put upon the morrow. Likewise, Elizabeth, although she is the most loved among all of the women Victor appraises in Frankenstein seems to be afraid of assuming an autonomous position. When Elizabeth decides to visit Justine in the jail, she must have Victor come with her because she’s afraid to go by herself—“I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me: I cannot go alone.” Yet on the off chance that she is alone—even for a brief instance—she dies. Doesn’t that seem symbolic? It’s almost as Shelley is arguing that women can’t be alone because they rely upon men to keep them safe and to help them travail against the currents of societal circumstances. Moreover, Victor elucidates clearly that Elizabeth is his throughout the novel—“it was the prospect of the day when, enfranchised from my miserable slavery, I might [claim] Elizabeth, and forget the past in union with her (Shelley 111).” Even Agatha, still young and a child in Frankenstein, represents several characteristic qualities that are typically highlighted as feminine virtues from a young age in a patriarchal society. Filial to the elderly, respectful to the word of her brother, always courteous and polite. As engrained from a young age—she learns not to go against the word of her male superiors, obviously respectful of her place already determined by society.

Frankenstein and Vegetarianism

            Throughout Shelley’s prose, there is a common, reoccurring theme that underscores a general account through the monster’s perspective. As noted throughout the text, the Creature maintains a vegetarian diet that Shelley meticulously articulates—“The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite (Shelley 73).”  Yet there are also several other characters who also resort to vegetarianism including the De Lacey family which Shelley also fastidiously details—“…and he showed her a large loath and a piece of cheese, [Agatha] seemed pleased, and went into the garden for some roots and plants (Shelley 76).” As noticed by now, the omission and lack of reference towards meat is evident in both the monster’s and the De Lacey’s description as the fiend’s narration of the De Lacey family goes to specify even further that none of the members of the De Lacey family hunt for food. However, many would challenge that vegetarianism was a last resort, since the fiend had not learned how to use fire prior to his discoveries of berries and roots, while the De Lacey family had penurious economic conditions, but what changes the entire validity of such a theory is that for the majority course of time, the Shelley family also abided by a strict, vegetarian diet. Moreover, Victor and his family were not in the same financial circumstances, and therefore, shows that vegetarianism wasn’t resorted to out of necessity, but out of self-obligation. Such a quality makes Frankenstein unique as well as notable because it is one of the few selected, renowned English novels that emphasizes with such tremendous detail the nourishment and intake each of its major characters in the novel consumes.   However, the principal reason that Shelley references vegetarianism is largely because of her husband Percy who practiced abstinence from meat consumption. Likewise, following a few years after Frankenstein was written and in development stage, Percy published his own reinterpretations of the Prometheus myth, suggesting that the significance of the titan’s carrying fire to earth was as a means of introducing flesh-eating to humanity and thus, from that point forward the pristine human civilization was ravaged by disease that was contracted from ingesting meat products due to the ability of fire to roast animals and creatures for satisfaction of appetite as it is written in context--"If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and the barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery"; "Never again may blood of bird or beast/ Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,/ To the pure skies in accusation steaming"; and "It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust." Likewise, he also alludes to this topic in his extended endnotes credited in his philosophical poem Queen Mab that was later reintroduced as a pamphlet called A Vindication of Natural Diet.

Hidden Parallels Between Frankenstein and the Bible

Throughout the novel Frankenstein, Victor consistently plays God through numerous recurring themes that can be demonstrated during several situations. Perhaps the most obvious context is when Victor insists on creating a new species, thus giving birth to the wretched fiend, and taking over God's greatest power—creation. The sheer similarity of the act performed and the exclamations that Victor voices in his dramatic monologues account for his distinct belief that he has received some sort of intellect of higher intelligence—“A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs (Shelley 32)”— as Shelley portrays quite visibly many of Victor’s aspirations were to role play God, follow in his footsteps, mirror his performance and actions, but above all, achieve the glory, recognition, fame, and respect from the ‘humans’ he sought to form.                                   There are also numerous illustrations that give insightful information about what Victor is thinking as he glorifies and prides himself in learning a science that no one else has mastered, which further perpetuates his belief that he can serve as God because he has access to surreptitious evidence—“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that accompanied me, still my enquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world (Shelley 19).”                                                                                                                                       Perhaps, Victor even believed that he had a heaven-to-earth revelation because text evidence supports that he had an epiphany upon discovering some vital truth that only he was allowed to see—“a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which is illustrated, I was surprised, that among so many men of genius who had directed their enquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret (Shelley 31).” Through such context, it almost seems as if Victor is envisioning that God has cast a beam of diving light at him and selected him as the ‘chosen’ one. As illustrated, Shelley again uses a religious connotation that is expressed through the imagery of light since oftentimes when a beam of light shines down from the clouds or even a rainbow, heavenly feats are associated with it.                                  Another character, Walton, also respectively aspires to become God, although not nearly as much as Victor does. Through simply the introduction of the first letter, his written dialogue vividly alludes and has connotations of association to a higher power—“These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagine that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. (Shelley 2)”—the numerous references to his own creation, Heaven, and ambitions for fame, clearly mirror desire that are in God’s holy, omnipotent image.                                                                                                                                                                     Moreover, simply Walton’s ambition to travel and find the North Pole seems to have many Biblical references. In the Bible, Jesus is able to walk on stormy seas. Likewise, Walton appears to be challenging God by proving that he too can overcome the forces of nature. Shelley illustrates this principal through numerous evidence of Romantic text as she has Walter expand on how the oceans must obey mankind, and how the seas are no match for man’s ship.