Feminist critic Anne K. Mellor argues that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is an attack on masculine Romanticism. To what extent do you agree with Mellor's assessment?
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- Thu Jan 13 2005

... Feminist critic Anne K. Mellor argues that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is an attack on masculine Romanticism. To what extent do you agree with Mellor's assessment? I believe that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is an attack on the masculine Romanticism, thus, meaning my agreement with Mellor's assessment. In Shelley's novel, the ambitious Romantic hero, Victor Frankenstein, challenges the laws of nature by trying to dominate the role of the females. He attempts to do so by creating artificial life, however, his attempt to tamper with the "ever-varied powers of nature", is then the cause for his "destruction". One interpretation of the novel is that man must keep equilibrium between his ambitious "pursuit of knowledge" and "the tranquility of his domestic affections", not allowing one aspect to "interfere" with another. Shelley structures her novel in a way that Walton's framing tale is used as a warning to the readers who can relate to masculine characteristics,













