In frankenstein his narrative victor portrays women as weak, suffering, obedient beings who live for men and depend on them in their lives. Surely shelly experienced this in her life, though she may or may not have agreed with it. Ironically the monster the one who victor call barbarian has a very progressive notion of the opposite sex. He believes that men and women are largely equal, not being bought up in frankenstein pre-feminist culture. The monster desires for a female companion does not convey a desire to rule over a women or a belief that a women should be dependent on him, but it simply shows his need for an equal companion with whom to share his equal sufferings.

Zehra Ali

Women's Status during the 19th century

Women today do not realize how their life would have like if they were born in the 19 th century or 150 years ago. Most women take for granted what they can accomplish, if they a determination for it. Women today can choose wether they want to get marry or not. In the 19th century a women who renains single was a social disaproval and pity. Women today can choose the number of children they want to reproduce and so much more. To the contrary, women in the 19thcentury did not have all these rights, in fact they lived in a state little better than slavery, they always had to obey men. In most cases men would all the resources. " A wealthy widow or a spinster was a lucky exception." During the 19 th century when a women marry to a men, everything they owned, inherited and earned, would automatically belong to their great genius husband, even if the men was a dumb as hell. In fact, this was assured by law and women had to verbally agreed to it. Men had received better education than women, women were barred from universities. In some, women all purpose during the 19th century was to marry and reproduce.
Queens public library book of women of era

Danie. M

Working class costume of 17th century women

Foreign visitors to England would often remark how well dressed the English* women were, one traveller has been quoted to say that English women would wear velvet on her back when she had not a crust of bread in her house. It shows that England did not have the ragged poor of Europe. Britain had not had a peasant class since mediaeval times and this was reflected in the appearance of its people.
*There may have been minor regional differences, for the purposes of re-enactment a broad-based English style is appropriate.
It was easy to tell the status of a person by the clothes they wore. The richer you were; the better fitted, brighter coloured and more decorative were the clothes you and your family wore. This extended to any servants you had. Clothes were part of servants pay, a well favoured servant could also expect to receive presents of cast off clothes from master or mistress, to be worn or sold on. The second hand market for clothing dressed the poorer in society and helped to finance the fashions of the aspiring rich.
Clothes were looked after, they were kept as clean as possible and were maintained in a good state of repair. The proverb 'a stitch in time saves nine' came from the days when if a repair was not rapidly done, further damage would be caused. Clothes were patched and darned until repair was no longer possible, when the item might be taken apart to be made into something else, for example, used to line quilts.
When researching early costume, the clothing of the poor is more difficult to trace. There are no surviving garments and few artists bothered to record what the poor wore - they could not afford to pay for portraits. However there are various ways to find out what was worn by the 'common folk'.

Zehra Ali

http://www.12eyes.co.uk/stays/ordwomen.htm

Frankenstein Social Condition

In 19th Century of Europe, there were two major event at that era. One was imperialism and other is industrial revolution. At that time Europe was so powerful, so they kept spread their power to the world. France conquered very wide areas of the world. While they conquering the other countries they could get many materials and many labors from the conquered countries. With that materials and labors the industrial revolution begun.

During the industrial revolution many things were invented and it made people’s life easier. However, because of the industrial revolution the gap of rich and poor got bigger. It was the most problem at those days. Wealthy people kept raised their wealth and poor people could not escape from the poverty.

Min Joon cha

Social condition of Europe in 19th century.

In 19th century, many things were changed in Europe. As the industrial revolution went through Europe, there was acceleration of urbanization. During urbanization, there were some problems like overcrowding and concentration of poor, poor quaility housing, loack of runnin water and sanitation, lack of ventilation and light, all of which contributes to the sperad of disease and to social tenstions. In rural society, there were growing importance of commercial famrming and growing role of merchants and other "capitalists" in agriculture society, and there were problems of rural overcowding and rural poverty.



In 1800s, there wre new social classes in Europe, the middle class and workin classes. In the middle class, there were bankers, industrialists, professionals, merchants, managers, etc. It was an uplift of class but ironically the meregence of another class, the working class.

There was a huge improvement of the social condition of Europe in 19th century after the revolutions, but as some got richer and richer, some got poorer and poorer. It made a huge gap between them.


-Wonyoung Sohn