Feminist Reading of FrankensteinWhen reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, one cannot help but notice that the female characters seem to have little substance compared to the male characters. This may be due to the time period in which she wrote: a time when women were considered inferior to men. This gender difference can be examined from different angles. Johanna M. Smith, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, approaches this question with a feminist lens in her essay titled "'Cooped up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein." The main points of Professor Smith's essay are that the female characters are only there to mirror the male characters and that the Frankenstein family has a strange lifestyle, which she describes as a "bookkeeping mentality" ( Smith 279). Smith begins by essay examining the historical factors that may have contributed to this seemingly sexist book. Shelley, writing in the first half of the 19th century, lived in a time when a woman “was conditioned to think that she needed a man's help” (Smith 275). In the novel itself, no woman speaks directly. The book has three basic narrators: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein's monster. The female characters are very weak in this novel, especially Elizabeth, Victor's cousin/fiancée (no, they are not from Arkansas). She is portrayed as the perfect woman, especially after the death of Victor's mother Caroline. She replaces the maternal figure in the home. But like all female characters in the story, her character has little substance. The character of Victor is described in detail, as is that of the monster and Henry Clerval. When Henry is killed, real sympathy is felt towards Victor, because he has just lost his lifelong friend. When Elizabeth is murdered, the reader has difficulty understanding how Frankenstein feels. Elizabeth (and the other main female characters: Justine and Caroline) are there like the male characters. Professor Smith states in his essay that "women function not as such, but rather as signals and conduits for men's relationships with other men" (283). This is especially clear when the monster kills Elizabeth on their wedding night. The monster is angry with Victor, so instead of harming him, he kills his wife. Elizabeth is used as a sort of ruler to measure the relationship between Victor and his monster..