The Monster/Angel Dichotomy in Frankenstein

In The Madwoman in the Attic, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the categories of angel and monster that are given to women in a patriarchal society "where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters" (1932). Women are expected to behave like angels, to conform to the expectations that (male) society has of them. If they do not conform, particularly if they are in any way intellecutal, they are considered monsters. According to Gilbert and Gubar, this contributes to women writers' "'anxiety of authorship' -- a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a 'precursor' the act of writing will isolate or destroy her" (1929). Gilbert and Gubar explain that this anxiety was more prominent in the 19th century, when women writers did not have any precursors from which to draw an example, to gain strength, and to add to a tradition. These women writers, to which Shelley belongs, had to choose between being an angel or a monster -- to either remain passive and repress their desire to write, risking madness, or to write anyway, allowing themselvs to be labeled as monsters.

Applying Gilbert and Gubar's theory to Frankenstein, it is possible to interpret the creature as the monstrous side of Shelley (in society's view) and Victor as the angel. The creature is the manifestation of what happens to a woman writer in a patriarchal society -- one that sees the woman as "other" and denies women subjectivity (as Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex). The creature is the "other" and is denied subjectivity by society. On the other hand, Victor represents what happens to a women writer who is forced to repress her desire to write. Once Victor gives life to his creature, he realizes the implications of what that means -- he gave life to a "monster." From that point on, he tries to deny that he ever did anything of the sort, and the secrecy of it drives him mad and even results in mental and physical ill-health that parallels the sicknesses that Gilbert and Gubar point out as prominent and even desired among 19th century "angelic" women. Thus, Frankenstein illustrate the two choices offered to a woman in patriarchal society (even though few women are present in the novel) and its unwelcoming effects: "Whether she is a passive angel or an active monster, in other words, the woman writer feels herself to be literally or figuratively crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her" (Gilbert and Gubar 1936).

Gilbert and Gubar as well as Simone de Beauvoir and other feminist theorists base their theory on the way women are perceived in society. What might a Marxist or cultural studies theorist say about the socialization of women? How would Marxism or cultural studies analyze society's effects on a woman writer?