Feminist and post-colonialist readings

Using feminist criticism and post-colonialism

You may want to apply a specific method or reading to your work with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Here, we show you how you can use the analytical methods called feminist criticism and post-colonialism to analyze and understand the novel. Note that you do not have to use both of them at the same time.

A feminist reading of the novel

At first glance, Frankenstein seems to be a very male-dominated novel that doesn’t defend the rights of women. All the women are passive, accept whatever society or the men decide, and end up dying innocently. Also, the women are all described in terms of their beauty, which seems to suggest that they are just objects of desire in men’s eyes. This reading is consistent with how society saw women at that time; they were considered to be weaker than men and incapable of rational thinking.

However, a feminist analysis of the novel suggests that Shelley subtl...