Frankenstein and Metamorphosis
In both Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Shelley’s Frankenstein, women are used to show how while being “weaker” can also demonstrate strength when it comes to clean men’s mess and that the absence of women ends in a messy ways. There are some differences between Metamorphosis and Frankenstein regarding the female characters in both books. I think Metamorphosis focuses on the idea of gender equality and how the presence of a male provider can limit women’s opportunity of growth. While Shelley’s Frankenstein displays women as passive, disposable and tools to teach men lessons rather than serving a specific role in which they can help Victor or the men in the book.
The fact that Victor didn’t “conceive” the monster with a woman gives us the perfect example of how the absence of women to “clean the mess of men” can end up being problematic for Victor and the rest of the men including the monster. Even though Victor had a companion in Elizabeth, he never considered procreating with her and instead tries to create life by himself and ends up making a mess for his arrogance, The female characters that we learn about throughout the book are shown to pay for men’s mistakes and arrogance, the first being Justine and how she is framed for the death of William Frankenstein while remaining a passive-submissive character. She demonstrates this with her speech “God knows how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me; I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts…” (Shelley 65) never actually fighting the accusations that she is charged with. In Metamorphosis we witness again a submissive Grete Samsa who cleans after her brother Gregor after he is transformed into a insect-like vermin, but the difference is that Grete actually uses demise of his brother to further her own position in the Samsa family. Even though she is still virtually a child, we see a much mature young women...