Rights for women have developed quite seriously over time, especially over the course of the last 300 years. Women have always been a marginalized group, so when they wrote novels up until the 20th century, it was a solid piece of literature always influenced by the world around them. This is especially true for Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, who was a growing young adult during the victorian era in which “Separate Spheres” developed, but Shelley was born to two significant political figures: William Godwin, a known anarchist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a large advocator for women’s rights. Shelley was never meant to follow societal expectations, and the female characters in her novel represent the belief that women can easily fit into both spheres. The women in Frankenstein are a combination of both tradition and non-traditional female roles which allow them to have superiority above other characters in the novel, but their tendency to lean towards motherhood prevails. Characters such as Safie, Justine, and Elizabeth all made lasting marks upon the two male characters in the novel, shaping Frankenstein and his creations’s actions by leading them …show more content…
Women were to stay within the confines of the ‘domestic’ sphere where they are to tend to house and home. Men were not allowed to take care of children or tend to the home, rather they were expected to be invested in law and politics. Overall, men and women were not supposed to dip into each other’s spheres, and husbands were expected to work hard so that their wife wouldn’t have to be on her feet. During this time, it was common knowledge that women were weak and fragile, if they tried to read or do too much housework, they may not be able to reproduce, which is her sole job, so major efforts were made to keep women from being mobile, such as machines made to turn the pages of a book and couches made specifically for