FEMINISM THROUGH FRANKENSTEIN

FEMINISM THROUGH FRANKENSTEIN

  As it is known, there have been always many differences in society between women and men. Women used to be dependent on men and they were kept doing “women's work” at home. However, due to the Industrial Revolution, women became a necessity in the workforce. That could have been the first time when women who had a different way of thinking )became to think differently by questioning and confronting gender roles and stereotypes. Through Frankenstein, the author seemed to ask herself these questions. When reading Frankenstein one can clearly see a patriarchal society where men are part of the public sector and women are left for the domestic.  While men are in search of knowledge, happiness and new experiences, women are limited to the house and excluded from this intellectual males´ sphere.

   Although the story is about a monster and science fiction, there are an issue of women's representation and its expression of romantic and attitudes which arouse through the plot. Women in Frankenstein are generally pure, innocent and passive. Though there are a few exceptions, such as Caroline Beaufort, who works to support her father, women seem to be kind but powerless. For example, Justine is executed for murder even being innocence; the female monster is aborted by Victor because of his fears of being unable to control her. This way of showing women so passive may be in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and his monster exposed.

Being the daughter of a modern feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, it is taken into consideration that Mary Shelley tries to express her feminist movement in Frankenstein as well. One can argue that Frankenstein represents a rejection of the male attempt to usurp, by unnatural ways, what is only from females, the birth. One can also infer that the novel is a rejection of the aggressive, rational and male-dominated science of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
 The status of women within the family, their role in society, and politics had been a subject of polemics for a couple of time. There are some problems related to the function of woman in that era. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley chose to write from three different perspectives in which all of the narrators are male. Women are represented through men’s perception with small amount of description and little detail which automatically reduce the importance of woman in the story. Women are not placed at the same level as men who could be thought that they are mentally suppressed, like when Victor treats Elizabeth as “a promised gift”. How a woman could be compared with just a gift?
 In summary, it is seen through all the novel how the author tries to show off how awful a patriarchal and chauvinist society was.The industrial revolution was extremely important in getting the feminist movement to the point it is at today. The industrial revolution provided factory jobs for women in an era in which they may not otherwise have been able to find work outside of the home. Women began to have a place working, and began earning their own wages.This gave women financial freedom from their husbands.  Soon after, workers began to create a feeling of unity amongst them. Women became to realize that they were indeed needed and necessary, and deserved to be treated equally.

French Revolution

French Revolution

   Inspired on the new ideals from the Enlightenment that proposed a new way of political system based on reason, knowledge and education, the French Revolution was an intention to fight against absolutism and to replace this with a republic. There were many causes to revolt but the way in which they did it in fact did not bring a solution.
  In the XVIII century, an absolute monarchy reigned over France. This corrupt leadership had lead a rigid social structure that was divided into three states. The First State was a privileged one; this consisted of the clergy that was associated to the catholic church. The Second Estate was another privileged estate, represented by the Nobility. Not only did they collect the taxes from the peasants, but they were also involved in various respected professions like banking, insurance, finance and manufacturing etc. The Third Estate was the lowest in the society but the biggest. Most of the citizens belonged to this social class. It was 96% of the population, basically everyone else, from peasants in the countryside to wealthy bourgeoisie merchants in the city. Every people from this third unprivileged estate had to pay half of their income in taxes and had none of the rights and privileges of the other two Estates. On the contrary, neither the first nor the second estate had to pay any taxes.

   As this situation was not enough, there was a sequence of events that resulted on France on the brink of revolution by 1789. One of them was France government bankrupting, it had wasted a lot of money in war outcomes. Also, the royals were accused of spending much money on luxury and the taxes were not sufficient for supporting all this, so the First and Second estates were asked to pay taxes but they refused. Another unexpected event was the bad harvest that the terrible weather had left. Many farmers became unemployed, meanwhile prices were rising and it was impossible for them to find a job, so they were dying of hunger. In order to give a solution, the King Louis XVI called the Estates General to set new taxes, but this was useless. Even worse, as nothing seemed to have a solution, the Third Estate called themselves a “national assembly” in order to draw up a constitution.

  Louis was left alone to deal with all the difficulties that the French revolution involved since most nobles had decided to leave France after their chateaux were burned. The king and the Queen needed to organize an invasion over France so as to stop the revolution and restore an absolute monarchy, so, Louis allowed his wife Marie-Antoinette to write letters to other monarchies asking for help to leave France secretly. Then Louis himself wrote to the kings of Prussia, Spain, Sweden, Austria and Russia to suggest an alliance to put down the revolution. This fact clearly showed that the King had no intention at all of reforming the country; he just wanted to be an absolute kingdom again. During the night of June 20-21, 1791, Louis and his family tried to escape to Montmedy, near the Austrian Netherlands secretly. They disguised themselves and carried false passports. However, Louis’s plan failed because they committed several mistakes: They had to use a large and slow coach because the Queen wanted all the family to travel together; the bodyguards wore easily recognizable uniforms. What is more, some people recognized Louis on the route to Varennes, and a French mob prevented his coach from proceeding. Louis could have taken the decision of shooting his way through the mob, but he preferred not to do it. As a consequence, Louis and his family were captured and brought back to Paris.

 After the execution of King Louis, society was divided into two groups: the JACOBINS who were a radical sort of French revolutionary and the GIRONDINS, who were moderate sort of French revolutionary. In February, it was clear that the war was still going badly for France. Every person who was suspected of being anti-revolutionary was sent to the guillotine. In August, the Jacobins declared that ‘Terror is the order of the day’. By the late summer, many areas of France were rebelling against the new radical Jacobin government. More than 12,000 were officially guillotined, but many others were shot, drowned or put to death some other way. The Terror was supposed to help the revolution survive, but it was not just the former members of the first and second estates who suffered at its hands. There were many incidents of horror during the Terror. In Lyons, a Jacobin ordered 300 people to be executed by cannon fire as the guillotine was ‘too slow’. Birds hovered above the water, eating dead flesh. The river water was so contaminated that fishing was banned. In Paris, thousands watched the executions. Women took their knitting with them, bets were placed on the order the prisoners would be executed in.

   In conclusion, the French Revolution was the beginning of a new way of thinking that allowed new ideas to flourish like fraternity, equality and liberty that changed Europe however, it was a cruel and bloody period in which thousands of people died.

A Tale of Two Cities

<Violence and Revolution>

 The novel takes place in Paris during the French Revolution.  Tyranny of the French aristocracy is shown through high taxes, unjust laws, a complete indifference for the poor, thus there was no food; the noblemen pressed peasants to give up every cent they earned to have exorbitant parties for them. All this made peasants outrage and eventually the revolution broke out. The ideals of the revolution were based on equality, fraternity and liberty. Of course, they were perfectly reasonable but the question is at which cost?

  Throughout the novel, noblemen were the main evidence of the aristocracy exploiting and oppressing the nation´s poor. Their abuse of power is clearly exemplified by the unfair imprisonment of Dr. Manette by Marquis St. Evrémonde. Other evidence is when Monseigneur only briefly stops to toss a coin toward the child´s father whom he has just run over. Also, the Marquis, raping peasants along with other mistreatments of the lower classes, provide some justification for the goals of the French mob; freedom was needed.

 However, the way in which revolutionaries fought for this liberation was not the correct one. As it is said: “practise what you preach” was not what actually happened. They fought against cruelty with more cruelty and they only reproduced the same they had suffered. The scenes in which the people sharpened their weapons at the grindstone and dance the grisly Carmagnole came across as deeply macabre. Now, the peasants used their newly discovered power to persecute the aristocrats through mass executions and imprisonment. Streets full of blood relate how nothing had changed. It is summarized in the final chapter “Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.”

 Though revolution is a great symbol of transformation and change and their reasons were entirely understandable, peasants have only reproduced a bloody and violent revolution that in fact did not have any positive consequence. The French revolutionaries come to abuse their power just as much as the nobility did.

 By showing how the revolutionaries use oppression and violence to further their own selfish and bloodthirsty ends, in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens suggests that whoever is in power, nobles or peasants,  will fall to the temptation to exercise their full power. In other words, Dickens shows that while tyranny will inevitably lead to revolution, revolution will lead just as inevitably to tyranny. The only way to break this cycle is through the application of justice and mercy.     

GEORGE III

Britain under rule of a mentally diseased King

  George III reigned Britain for almost sixty years. He is remembered for getting mad. It is almost impossible to believe that one of the most powerful kingdoms in the whole world was about to lose its great power because of its King illness. At that time,  the best doctors determined that the King was going mad.  Everybody seemed to be on alert  because of his mental disease but not for good reasons; they were  trying to take advantage of it. Needles is to say that this is the reason why he was known as the “mad” King.

 King George was the ruler of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 until his death in 1820. He was remembered for losing thirteen colonies and he was the third Hanoverian monarch and the first one to be born in England and to use English as his first language. He was a loving husband and father but very strict; he wanted his children to be disciplined. Despite this, his eldest son disgusted the king; he went to parties, drank in excess and gambling. In fact, they disliked each other. The king referred to his son as the fat, and he ridiculed his father.

  King George´s disease was, later known, called Porphyria. This disease causes a lot of pain, aches, blue urine and mental disorders. At the beginning of his disease and without finding a logical explanation for his behaviour doctors isolated him, treating him as an insane man. He was forced to wear a straitjacket and to obey the doctor's orders. Despite his illness, George III was a dedicated and diligent king and won the respect of his politicians. In fact, when his illness drove him off the political scene, people realised how much they needed him. Although he was ill, he continued to reign Great Britain and Ireland. His behaviour was very criticized by his eldest son, who was a traitor as well as some members of the Parliament. King George's eldest son pushed him into a public breakdown so that he could become Regent.

Time went by and he could recover successfully. His illness was stabled and, this allowed him to rule England for many more years. He became very popular and loved by people of Great Britain. He ruled as long as his illness allowed him to do. All in all, he also became famous and well known as The Mad King.

George III - Mind Map

George I - From Horrible Histories

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