A Feminist and Psychological Criticism of Mary Shelley’s
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Start Date
23-4-2026 12:00 AM
Description
This essay proposes an integrated feminist and psychological interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, arguing that gender ideology and psychological development are inseparable within the novel. While the feminist criticism has long emphasized the exclusion and silencing of women, and psychological criticism has focused upon the trauma, abandonment, and fractured identity; this essay contends that these approaches must be read together. Victor Frankenstein’s act of creation represents a patriarchal appropriation of feminine reproduction that produces both monstrosity and psychological damage. The absence of mothers functions as both a feminist critique of women’s exclusion of authorship and agency and both as a formative psychological wound that cripples characters’ capacities for attachment, nurture, and responsibility. Through Victor and the Creature as mirrored doubles, Shelley exposes Romantic masculinity as a system that damages both women and men. Frankenstein thus reveals the patriarchy to not only as a social injustice, but as a psychologically destructive force.
Recommended Citation
Hutchings, Alyssa, "A Feminist and Psychological Criticism of Mary Shelley’s" (2026). 2026 Student Academic Showcase. 27.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/src_2026/oral_presentation/1/27
A Feminist and Psychological Criticism of Mary Shelley’s
This essay proposes an integrated feminist and psychological interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, arguing that gender ideology and psychological development are inseparable within the novel. While the feminist criticism has long emphasized the exclusion and silencing of women, and psychological criticism has focused upon the trauma, abandonment, and fractured identity; this essay contends that these approaches must be read together. Victor Frankenstein’s act of creation represents a patriarchal appropriation of feminine reproduction that produces both monstrosity and psychological damage. The absence of mothers functions as both a feminist critique of women’s exclusion of authorship and agency and both as a formative psychological wound that cripples characters’ capacities for attachment, nurture, and responsibility. Through Victor and the Creature as mirrored doubles, Shelley exposes Romantic masculinity as a system that damages both women and men. Frankenstein thus reveals the patriarchy to not only as a social injustice, but as a psychologically destructive force.