Elizabeth as a typical Victorian woman in FrankensteinElizabeth is an important character in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He is also the most important person in Victor's life for many reasons. Not only is she beautiful beyond belief, she is also submissive and gentle. Elizabeth knows her role in the house and fulfills her duties without hesitation or complaint. Always concerned about Victor, she is willing to do anything to ensure his happiness. Elizabeth is Victor's most precious possession, what he must value and protect above all else. She is his faithful love. Elizabeth's many qualities classify her as a typical woman of nineteenth-century Victorian England. Submission is one of the main characteristics of Victorian English women. He was “taught to be submissive and manipulative” (Kanner 305). The qualities of “selflessness, patience, and outward obedience” were also “required” of women (Prior 96). In contrast to the “masculine energy” of men, women were thought to possess a “feminine passivity” that rendered them incapable of actively venturing into the world with curiosity (Kanner 208). This false belief on the part of men, and not the “feminine passivity” of women, is what has prevented women from venturing into the world and confined them to the home. This confinement is evident in the woman's following diary: All this time my Lord was in London where he had every infinite resource at his disposal. He went abroad a lot, to Cocking, to bowling alleys, to plays and to horse racing. . . I stayed in the country many times with a sad and heavy heart. . . so, how can I truly say, I am an owl in the desert. (Before 200) Likewise, in Frankenstein, while the young Victor Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerv... in the center of the card... Victor as if he were his. Elizabeth is submissive, sentimental, polite, sacrificial and Beautiful. She has all the typical feminine characteristics. Thus, through images of Elizabeth, Mary Shelley clearly and accurately describes attitudes towards Victorian women in nineteenth-century England. Elizabeth lives, and dies, in the role that Shelley and company had written for her and her sisters in real life. Works Cited Kanner, Barbara, ed. The women of England: from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. Hamden: Archon Books, 1979.Prior, Mary, ed. Women in English society, 1500-1900. New York: Methuen, 1985. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A vindication of women's rights: an authoritative text, background, criticism. Ed. Carol H. Poston. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.