(This is a few weeks old; I didn't realize that I hadn't posted it.)

Two smaller-scale observations for this post:

First, I have been struck by the treatment of class in all of the works we've read so far, but an observation really became concrete to me while reading Frankenstein, specifically on the treatment of servants. In each of the novels, there has been a scene where the presence of a servant surprises us, not by the nature of their actions, but by the way the author leaves their presence unmentioned, thus making their actions "jump out" to the reader, at least from my modern perspective. Did Jane Austen, Goete and Mary Shelley expect their audiences to assume that servants would be following the protagonists at all times, and therefore to be unfazed by their unprepared introductions? Am I just a poor reader? This phenomenon reminds me of an essay by George Orwell--the name escapes me--written while he was in India. In Orwell's account, the British colonists treated the Indians as invisible people, only seen in terms of action, never as a being. I will do more research on this and write more on this theory.

Second, I am almost incredulous that Mary Shelley, as a woman (and the daughter of one of the most famous feminists in history) would have written a character so uninteresting and passive as Elizabeth, who seems shallow and unrealized, thinking only of her cousin's happiness to unbelivable extents. The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps since we are seeing Victor's subjective account (told to the ship's captain), what we recieve is only Shelley's impression of a man's idealized supplicating woman. However, I am disinclned to pursue this theory. The author seems to have forgotten that her narrator is speaking to a person in a higher level of the narrative; many details are included that I find unconvincing in that context, that would fit more readily with an omncient narrator (or the psuedo-omnicience of Emma's narrator).

Both of these topic beg for some research and further contemplation.