COMPARE THE WAYS IN WHICH THE AUTHORS OF YOUR TEXTS EXPLORE THE
ROLE OF GENDER IN THE MISUSE OF SCIENCE
Both Atwood and Shelley create distinct divisions between male and female roles in
relation to science within their novels; both explore the implications of the passive
female role and the consequences of the active male role on society as well as the
individual. Indeed, whilst Atwood constructs a society which rejects science but embraces
the natural process of female reproduction, Shelley explores the implications of using
science to create life without the involvement of the female role. However, in the case of
both novels, male involvement in science is depicted in a negative light, in which the
construction of selfish male characters allows the author to depict the issues of male
power in science.
Indeed, in Atwood’s fictious society of ‘Gilead’, some women are given the most
prominent role in reproduction as society depends on their ability or inability to
reproduce. However, the ‘handmaids’ do not have an active effect on their own scientific
role as they repressed into such a position; science is rejected but the female in the
reproductive role is embraced to the extent that it has a detrimental effect on women,
hence Offred describes herself as a ‘walking womb’ in order to suggest that she is
defined completely by her fertility. In this sense, the author touches on the issues
experienced during the sexual liberation of the 60’s in which the second wave feminists
of this period successfully fought for better reproductive rights; the contraceptive pill,
despite worries over its possible side effects, was being taken by 1, 187, 000 women by
1962. This success however was met by backlash from a group called ‘The New Right
movement’, whose principles included that of being anti-abortion, anti-feminist, and in
support of traditionalist gender roles, with Phyllis Shafty publicly saying that the
liberation of women was a threat to family values. The ideals of this movement are
hyperbolised in Atwood’s novel as it is this return to the traditional female role which
removes the influence of science and forces women into such a passive role. This is
made evident through the author’s use of the metanarrative in which her central female
narrator Offred consistently acknowledges her place in society ‘I am too important… too
scarce… I am a national recourse’ suggesting that by heightening the importance of the
female role in reproduction, women are made more of a commodity. In this sense
Offred’s self-objectification in describing herself as a ‘national recourse’ highlights the
passivity of her position; it is not action she would like to take herself, but rather
responsibility. Indeed, the structural use of ellipses in this case provides a pause between
the juxtaposing notion of the importance of the female role with the impersonality of
such a role. Whilst the repetition of the adverb ‘too’ perhaps suggests that she is
important to such an extent that she has lost all sense of self, hence this shift from
describing herself using the personal pronoun ‘I’ to the removal of the pronoun in return
for objectification ‘national recourse’ which removes her identity. Indeed, Atwood
highlights the negative effect of rejecting science on the female individual.
This exploitation of the female role is completely contrasted in ‘Frankenstein’ as the
female is given no role in reproductive science. And yet, in each case women are made
passive and are allowed no active role which has a consequently negative effect on the
individual; just as Offred’s position forces her to lose a sense of identity, it is the
creature’s lack of domestic affection which causes him to feel isolated in a similar
manner. Indeed, Shelley has also drawn from contextual experience in order to suggest
the negative effect of abusing the female role in nature, as she herself lost her mother
Mary Wollstonecraft, advocate for women’s rights, who died giving birth to her in 1797.
Hence, Shelley grew up with no motherly affections, just like the creature. Hence, it is
often suggested that It is suggested that the relationship between Frankenstein and the
creature is a result of Mary’s simultaneous attractions and repulsion towards
motherhood, and that the creature’s lack of domestic affection parallels Shelley’s own.
This is evident as the creature states ‘No father had watched me in my infant days, no
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