Daniela Lopez
Research Paper Outline Rough Draft

(PS. sorry its so long. I got a bit carried away)

Shelly’s Effort to Subvert the Patriarchal Hierarchy in Frankenstein

1. Introduction (includes thesis)
   1. This research analyzes Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, written in 1831 and published by the small London publishing house. This research draws upon primary and secondary sources, including peer-reviewed journal articles, dissertations and book reviews. Previous research focuses on Shelly’s undermining of women through the representation of female characters such as Caroline, Justine, Elizabeth and Safie. This papers further investigates Shelly’s criticism of the limited role of women in nineteenth century England in effort to subvert the patriarchal hierarchy in regards to family structure. (THESIS NEED TO INCOOPERATE THREE THINGS BELOW).
      • Social construction of gender that values men over women (public vs domestic sphere)
      • Female characters portrayed as submissive
      • Men’s action on women? (how do I say that better)
      • Subverting hierarchy by creating awarenes
      • Also, show how Shelly uses the failure of men in Frankenstein to encourage the use of the feminine voice in the actual world
        • “their virtual exclusion of female characters and perspectives purposefully enacts in the novel’s form the misogyny that dooms the male characters to failure.” (Davis) The idea that the exclusion of women is what led men to failure in the novel can be used to argue that Shelly uses the failure of men in Frankenstein to encourage the use of the feminine voice in the actual world.

1. Background information on women in the 19^th century? ß is this necessary?
   1. Use Hughes, Kathryn. “Gender Roles in the 19th Century.”
   2. Emphasizes the sharp definition between the roles of women and men at this point in history
   3. Marriage, sexuality, education, and rights and attitudes toward gender

• Social construction of gender that values men over women (public vs domestic sphere)
  1. Society founded on rigid division of sex-roles: the man inhabits the public sphere; the woman is relegated to the private or domestic sphere (mellor)
     • The men work outside the home
       • Alphonse Frankenstein = public servants
       • Victor = scientist
       • Clerval and his father = merchants
       • Walton = explorer
     • Women confined to home
       • Elizabeth cannot travel with victor (meller)à “regretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her experience and cultivating her understanding” (Shelly ??)
       • Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein=housewives
       • Elizabeth=child care provider
       • Margaret =nurse

1. Masculine work segregated from domestic sphere (Mellor)
   • Victor Frankenstein cannot do scientific research and think lovingly of Elizabeth and his family at the same time

1. Female Characters portrayed as submissive
   1. demeaning characterization of females
      • Objectified, used, abused, and easily discarded
      • “serve a very specific function and impact a man’s life” (Haddad)
   2. Women are not completely passive victims. Instead, they stand in an in-between position in society, with only partial rights. (hodges proves this… go to annotated biblio) à should I include this? How can I integrate this?

1. Caroline
   • dies unnecessarily because she cannot restrain herself from taking care of Elizabeth, even thought she knows she is contagiousàIncarnates patriarchal ideal of female devotion and self sacrifice (mellor)
   • devoted to her father (nurses him until he dies) + marries his best friend
2. Justine
   • Given no justice. Inactive passive in her trial “speech and actions demonstrate passivity” (Haddad)
   • “But I have no power of explaining it…I am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket” (shelly 66??)
   • As a young girl, Justine loses one of her parents and is mistreated by the surviving one, in this case her mother. The emotional and financial poverty of her situation moves the Frankenstein’s to adopt her, and Justine’s gratitude and the combined tutoring of Caroline and Elizabeth make her into yet another adoring and gentle female (davis 13)
   • Monster frames Justine bc of hatred for women (davis 5)
     • “all that she could give me,”à language showing his belief that women should satisfy him (shelly…)

1. Safie
   • Safie may share Shelley and Wollstonecraft’s values, but she is still in the hands of a tyrannical father, the Turk who offers her hand to Felix to repay him for his working to free the man from his unjust imprisonment. At first, Felix is “too delicate to accept this offer” (123), but he looks forward to marrying her anyway, and he remains with them “in expectation of the event” (124). Once again, a woman is offered to a man as a reward without her being consulted; and once again, a genuinely caring man falls into behavior that discounts the will of a woman (davis 15)
2. Elizabeth (davis 12) (p36ish)
   • Caroline regards her as “a pretty present for my Victor,” to which Victor replies, ” I . . . looked upon Elizabeth as mine — mine to protect, love, and cherish” (36-37). Elizabeth therefore becomes a corn- modified form of reward for Caroline’s charity and for Victor’s possession.
   • When Elizabeth is killed by the monster “Elizabeth has become another inert victim in this game of insanity and male-centered mayhem. She has been demeaned and reduced to a simple tool of revenge, along with the other female characters appearing in Frankenstein.” (Haddad)
3. Margaret
   • “She is useful to us as an audience because without her, there is no reason for Walton to relay his story. Yet, we never meet this character nor do we know if she really exists, if she ever reads the story and gets the letters, or if she has anything to say about it. She is the most distant and passive female character in the novel and also the most necessary to the novel as a whole.” (Haddad)

1. Victor’s / Men’s action on women
   1. Victor hypothesizes the action of female monster (davis 5)
      • “she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.” (shelly 166ish
   2. Victor feels the threat of female reproductive powers, which his earlier experiments had sought to subvert. The possibility that his female monster might reproduce moves Victor to destroy her: (Davis 5)
      • “one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (shelly
   3. Victor desires the company of a man (Shelly 4)
      • “I desire company of a man” àWomen are not meant for the public sphere
   4. Victor equates sexuality and death, but also confuses his fiancé with his mother, showing a dangerous tendency to consolidate the women he knows into one loathsome form. Such are the psychological consequences to him of his efforts to subvert maternal reproductive power. (Davis 6)
      • Find when he has dream of Elizabeth turning into dead mom

1. Other stuff I can put (probably will take out but extra research)
   1. Each of these three digressions dramatizes the compounding of women’s problems by inherited ideas of courtship and women’s roles (davis 13)
   2. They stress the inter- generational transmission of ideas that render women mute and powerless and that subtly corrupt even the best intentioned of the men (davis 13)
   3. women in the interior triptych and the men in the exterior one are also literary legacies (davis 13)
   4. Shelley subverts the exclusivity of the masculine voice, revealing it to be monstrously destructive of men, women, families, and children (davis 16)
   5. systematic exclusion of women’s voices as the three men narrate their tales

• Conclusion
  1. Talk about 3 things in thesis
  2. Shelly uses the failure of men in Frankenstein to encourage the use of the feminine voice in the actual world
  3. Shelly subverting hierarchy by creating awareness