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MARY SHELLEY
Quick Facts
Biography
NAME : Mary Shelley
BIRTH DATE: August 30, 1797
DEATH DATE :February 1, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England, United Kingdom
PLACE OF DEATH: London, England, United Kingdom
Early Life
Parents:
- William Godwin, a philosopher of anarchist views and a political radical,
- Mary Wollstonecraft, and early feminist writer.
Her household provided her with a very stimulating intellectual environment where the main political and literary trends of the period were discussed.
Coleridge was one of her father’s friends and as a girl she heard him recite his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.
Marriage
Marriage
At the age of 16 she fell in love with Percy Shelley, who was an ardent student of her father, and escape to Switzerland and Italy with him.
They got married after Shelley’s wife’s death in 1816.
Writing Frankenstein
- The Shelleys, Lord Byron and John Polidori, after reading German ghosts stories decided to write frightening tales themselves.
- Frankenstein was finished in 1817 and published anonymously in 1818.
Writing Frankenstein
Last Years
Last Years
In the later years, she suffered the loss of :
- her half-sister Fanny Imlay, who
- committed suicide;
- her husband, who drowned in the Gulf of Spezia;
- two of her three children
She died of brain cancer on February 1 in 1851, at the age of 53, and she was buried at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth.
Timeline works
Mounseer Nongtongpaw
Frankenstein
Valperga
- Composition date: 1807
- was published through her father's company
- Composition date: 1817
- Was published anonymously in 1818
- Composition date: 1823
- It was inspired by the italian travel of the Shelley's couple and it has an almost feminist structure
Mathilda
The Last Man
History of a Six Weeks' Tour
- Composition date: 1826
- It is a science fiction about the end of humanity because of the plague
- Composition date: 1818
- It was written after the pain of losing his son William
- Composition date: 1817
- It is a travelogue of Mary and Percy's escape to Europe
Frankenstein at a glance
FRANKENSTEIN
Type of Work: novel
Genres: Gothic Literature and Romantic Movement
First Published: In 1818
Setting: Geneva; the Swiss Alps, Ingolstadt, England and Scotland and the northern ice
Motifs: danger of knowledge, allusion to Goethe's Faust, obsession and revenge
Major Symbols: the monster, electricity, light and fire
Plot
Character
Victor Frankenstein Creator of the monster
Dr Victor Frankenstein
Victor becomes obsessed with the idea of creating the human form
Immediately after creating the monster, he falls into a depression and fear.
Not fully aware of the consequences of his creating a new human, he spends his entire life trying to destroy the same creation.
The monster
The Monster
The creature created by Victor Frankenstein while at the University of Ingolstadt.
"Formed into a hideous and gigantic creature," the monster faces rejection and fear from his creator and society.
The monster's rejection from society pushes him to commit murder against his creator's family.
Elizabeth Lavenza
She is the orphan child taken in by the Frankenstein family and lovingly raised with Victor.
Elizabeth Lavenza
Elizabeth later becomes Victor's wife and is killed by the monster on their honeymoon.
She is a champion for the poor and underpriviledged.
Henry Clerval
He is Victor's best friend, who who is killed by the monster.
Henry Clerval
Alphonse
Frankenstein
He is Victor's father.
Alphonse Frankenstein
He suffers from illness and depression.
Caroline Beaufort
Caroline Beaufort
She is Frankenstein Victor's mother.
Caroline dies of scarlet fever when Victor is 17.
William Frankenstein
William Frankenstein
He is Victor's youngest brother who is killed by the monster.
William's murder is the turning point of the novel.
Justine Moritz
She is the housekeeper for the Frankenstein family.
Justine goes to her death with GRACE and DIGNITY.
Justine Moritz
The De Lacey family
The De Lacey family is composed by M. De Lacey, Felix, Agatha and Safie.
The De Lacey family
They were exiled from France for treason against their government.
Robert Walton
Robert Walton
Robert Walton is an arctic explorer and he finds Victor near death.
Themes
Dangerous Knowledge
The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life.
Victor’s act of creation results at the end in the destruction of everyone dear to him.
Sublime Nature
The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism, offers characters the possibility of spiritual renewal.
The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel.
Sublime Nature
Monstrosity
His monstrosity results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation.
He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings.
Monstrosity
Perhaps Victor himself is a kind of monster.
Texts
Texts
This profusion of texts is an important aspect of the narrative structure, as the various writings serve as concrete manifestations of characters’ attitudes and emotions.
Language plays an
enormous role in the
monster’s development.
Family
Frankenstein presents family relationships as central to human life.
Most of the book’s horror and suffering is caused by characters losing their connection to their families, or not having a family in the first place.
Family
“I was dependent on none and related to none.”
The Monster does have a family, Frankenstein should be his father.
Parenthood and Responsibility
Parenthood and Responsibility
The novel highlights the theme of individual responsibility as well as social and parental responsibility.
Justine’s death signifies that entire the judicial process lacks responsibility when they punish an innocent.
Frankenstein forgets his parental responsibility towards his creation.
Alienation
Frankenstein suggests that social alienation is both the primary cause of evil and the punishment for it.
“My protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom.”
Alienation
The monster feels that he is alienated from human society for his aspect, and so HE FIRST RECOGNIZES THAT HE IS UGLY.
“when I viewed myself in a transparent pool[…]I was filled with the bitterest sensations.”
Ambition
“If no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”
Ambition
Frankenstein’s real mistake is that he places his ambition above his responsibilities to other people and to his creation.
Victor thinks he will be like a god, but ends up the father of a devil.
Revenge
Revenge
The monster begins its life with a warm, open heart.
After it is abandoned and mistreated first by Victor and then by the De Lacey family, the monster turns to revenge.
Revenge does not just consume the monster, however.
It also consumes Victor, the victim of the monster's revenge.
Prejudice
Every human character in the novel assumes that the monster must be dangerous based on its outward appearance, when in truth the monster is warm and
open-hearted.
Prejudice
The violence and prejudice he encounters convinces him of the "barbarity of man."
Lost Innocence
Lost Innocence
Frankenstein presents many examples of the corruption of youthful innocence.
The most obvious case of lost innocence involves Victor.
Victor's cruel "un-innocent" behavior also destroys the monster's innocence.
Shelley suggests that innocence is fleeting, and will always be either lost or destroyed by the harsh reality of human nature.
Is the Monster good or bad ?
Sources of Frankenstein
Models
Seven important sources can be identified:
- Ovid's Metamorphoses
- John Milton's Paradise Lost
- Coleridge's The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
- William Beckford's Vathek
- Luigi Galvani's De Viribus Electricitatis In Motu Musculari
- William Godwin's Caleb Williams
- Humphry Davy's Elements Of Chemical Philosophy
"I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel." Chapter 10
Context
Frankenstein and the Scientific Revolution
Many critics read the book as a critical response to what happens when science is not paired with individual moral responsibility.
Mary Shelley and
the Scientific Revolution
Victor Frankenstein is fixated on the glory of achievement, without considering what it will mean to have a new species be dependent on him.
Mary Shelley and Romanticism
Frankenstein exemplifies many of the values and characteristics associated with Romanticism:
- the focus on individual emotions
- the enthusiasm about the grandeur and the beauty of the natural world
- the celebration of creativity and curiosity
- the figure of the artist
Walton and Frankenstein are ambitious geniuses who are determined to live up to their destinies; while neither is an artist, both engage in works of ground-breaking creativity by pushing the limits of geography and science.
Mary Shelley and
the Gothic Novel
Gothic novels take place in gloomy or far away places.
Gothic novels focus on the mysterious and supernatural.
In the Gothic novel, the characters seem to bridge the mortal world and the supernatural world.
Influence in ethical questions of science
Legacy
- In 1896, H.G Wells published The Island of Dr. Moreau
- Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake
- Tv series Black Mirror
Why Frankenstein matters
Frontiers in science, technology and medicine
Medicine Stanford University Article
"Frankenstein is not only the first creation story to use scientific experimentation as its method, but it also presents a framework for narratively examining the morality and ethics of the experiment and experimenter."
"While artistic derivations, such as films and performances, and literary references have germinated from the book for the past 200 years, the current explosion of references to Frankenstein in relation to ethics, science and technology deserves scrutiny." ...
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2018winter/why-issues-raised-in-Frankenstein-still-matter-200-years-later.html
Frankenstein' Reflects the Hopes and Fears of Every Scientific Era
Atlantic Article
"The novel is usually considered a cautionary tale for science, but its cultural legacy is much more complicated."
"In May, MIT Press will publish a new edition of the original text, “annotated for scientists, engineers, and creators of all kinds.” As well as the explanatory and expository notes throughout the book, there are accompanying essays by historians and other writers that discuss Frankenstein’s relevance and implications for science and invention today."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/franken-science/523560/
Important quotations
Quotations
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?"
"What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?"
"So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation."
"I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on."