Identity of Women in Shelleys Frankenstein, Brontes...

Identity of Women in Shelleys Frankenstein, Brontes Jane Eyre, and Eliots The Mill on the Floss George Eliot is quoted as stating: A womans hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them (Miner 473). To extend this notion, Jean Giraudoux in Tiger at the Gates, states I have been a woman for fifty years, and Ive never been able to discover precisely what it is I am (474). These two statements are related to each other because they express, in large part, the dilemma facing Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontà «, and George Eliot as they set out to write fictional manuscripts. Giraudoux may not be able to define female even though she herself is a woman, because a shadow has annihilated the hopes she might have had in†¦show more content†¦He is created by Shelley to bear the weight of her personal feelings of loss in a male world and of being defined by men; thus the monster is defined as a male. His despondency is the result of Shelley realizing the molding of a male culture on her female uniqueness, and in result sees herself not as a unique female individual, but a formed, boxed-in creature; she realizes the monster that I am. Jane, speaking for Charlotte, looks at herself in a mirror, rather than through a screen of definitions men have created in regard to her. She ignores the limiting stories, and sees how cold and dark it is to be true to the female qualities within her body. Being true to the qualities means coldness and darkness; words reminiscent of aloneness, and these are harsher than dealing with viewing herself within the portrait of reality: in a male-dominated society, containing males who create the role she must live. Lastly, Maggie looks at an inverted mirror, described as a square looking-glass [emphasis my own]. The shape of the mirror is important because boxes are also square, and Maggie, like George, feels that she is in a box created for her, with only the dark back of the mirror to view. In the scene, Maggie considers turning the mirror around, but then quickly reconsiders. Perhaps she feels the act will do no good, for light must be present for a mirror