Johanna M. Smith (Essay Date 1992)

SOURCE: Smith, Johanna M. "'Cooped Up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein. "In Mary Shelley: Frankenstein, edited by Johanna M. Smith, pp. 270-85. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Smith analyzes the influence of the nineteenth-century doctrine of "separate spheres" for men and women on Shelley's Frankenstein.

It is important to note that Frankenstein was published anonymously, that its woman author kept her identity hidden. Similarly, no women in the novel speak directly: everything we hear from and about them is filtered through the three masculine narrators. In addition, these women seldom venture far from home, while the narrators and most of the other men engage in quests and various public occupations. These facts exemplify the nineteenth century's emerging doctrine of "separate spheres," the ideology that split off the (woman's) domestic sphere from the (man's) public world...