This essay shall argue that the real fear is that the female villain is actually (according to the period’s ideas of gender) typically feminine in relation to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or the Modern Promestheus (1823) and Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya: Or the Moor (1806). Throughout literature over the centuries, female characters have most often been portrayed as the gentler and more compassionate of the two sexes, displaying characteristics most closely and fittingly acquitted to mothers, the givers of life. Throughout the literature of the passing generations, women are often overlooked as anything more than fitting their purpose of mothering the next generation; however, writers as early as Shakespeare and more recently the likes of Mary
