Question
Question: Explore the significance of female characters in Frankenstein. [20 marks + 5 SPaG]
Mark scheme (Level 6, 17-20 marks):
- AO1: Justine's wrongful execution; Elizabeth's passive victimhood ('she shall not, oh no, she shall not!'); Safie's agency as anomaly; Margaret Saville as silent reader; Caroline Beaufort's death; the destroyed female Creature.
- AO2: Analysis of female absence — Victor's destruction of the female Creature is a refusal of female reproductive autonomy; female characters speak through letters or men.
- AO3: Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); Anne K. Mellor's feminist reading (1988); Gilbert & Gubar's Madwoman in the Attic (1979) — Shelley critiques male appropriation of birth.
- Conclusion: Shelley dramatises the catastrophic costs of a world that silences and instrumentalises women.
20 marks · take your time before peeking.
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Generated by TopMyGrade AI · cross-check official sources before relying on the mark-scheme phrasing.