The Women of Frankenstein- William Veeder

• Mary Shelley's sense of weakness in herself and womanhood makes her defensive in Frankenstein.
• Women are no more immune than men to weakness, but women are less weak. They are not destroyed by being effeminate (womanly, feminine), but simply by a world that is incredibly strong.
• The courtroom scene minimizes Justine's weakness. Shelley makes Justine a victim, not a weak woman, in the courtroom. 
• Since Justine does state that she did not kill William after the verdict, Justine no longer appears weak. Had Shelley wanted to make her a weak character, she would have simply made her confess to killing the boy. 
• Shelley makes Justine a victim of the Romish clergy ("My confessor has besieged me; he threatened...excommunication and hell fire in my last moments" (56)) and the untrustworthy judiciary ("They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge" (56)).
• True woman, according to Shelley, is not debilitatingly weak but touchingly vulnerable. Shelley reveals in rue woman not a feminine weakness which destroys her but a radical purposiveness which releases her. Justine's "passive death becomes...a retaliation." Justine is self-victimized enough to be understandably human.