Mary Shelley
• Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797, the daughter of two well-known
writers and radical political thinkers.
• Her mother, the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, died ten days after
Shelley was born.
• Shelley grew up worshiping her father, William Godwin (to whom
Frankenstein is dedicated). Emotionally distant, he nonetheless oversaw
her education and held high expectations for her intellectual development
and literary ambition.
• It was through her father that Mary met the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe
Shelley, then a young married man who admired Godwin's work and
frequently visited their home.
• Mary was sixteen and Shelley was still married (and his wife pregnant)
when they eloped to the continent to escape Godwin's wrath, taking with
them Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister.
Mary Shelley
• Much of Mary Shelley's life was marked by tumult and tragedy,
giving her ample material for the themes of abandonment and loss
that pervade Frankenstein.
• A daughter was born prematurely in 1815 and died a few days later.
• In 1816, when Mary, Percy, and Claire were neighbors of the poet
Lord Byron in Switzerland, Byron proposed that for entertainment
the assembled company, which included Byron's personal physician,
each write "a ghost story."
• Mary began to write Frankenstein.
• That same year, her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, committed suicide. A
few months later, Percy's wife, Harriet, drowned.
• In December 1816, Mary and Percy were married in London. They
had four children altogether, only one of whom survived childhood,
before Percy Shelley drowned at sea in 1822.
Mary Shelley
• During her lifetime, Mary Shelley wrote
several novels, including Frankenstein (1818)
and The Last Man (1826). She collected Percy
Shelley's posthumous poetry and wrote
biographical essays as well as numerous
articles and stories for magazines. She died in
London in 1851, at age fifty-three.
Frankenstein
The Novel
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein begat another monster—the frequently
cartooned, green-skinned Frankenstein of popular culture who
roams the streets on Halloween in the company of mummies and
skeletons.
• In the novel, the monster is nameless, and Victor Frankenstein is
the creature's creator, an earnestly romantic, idealistic, and welleducated young gentleman whose studies in "natural philosophy"
(p. 40) and chemistry evolve from "a fervent longing to penetrate
the secrets of nature" (p. 41).
• However, it is a tribute to the power of Shelley's work—a
masterpiece—that it has spawned a parody, no matter how
skewed, much as Frankenstein's creation parodies the divine
creation of Adam
Frankenstein
The Novel
• There is some logic, too, in the popular tendency to conflate the
monster and his creator under the name of "Frankenstein.“
• As the novel progresses, Frankenstein and his monster vie for the
role of protagonist.
• We are predisposed to identify with Frankenstein, whose character
is admired by his virtuous friends and family and even by the ship
captain who rescues him, deranged by his quest for vengeance,
from the ice floe. He is a human being, after all.
• However, despite his philanthropic ambition to "banish disease
from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a
violent death" (p. 42), Frankenstein becomes enmeshed in a
loathsome pursuit that causes him to destroy his own health and
shun his "fellow-creatures as if...guilty of a crime" (p. 57). His
irresponsibility causes the death of those he loves most, and he falls
under the control of his own creation.
Frankenstein
The Novel
• The monster exhibits a similar kind of duality, arousing
sympathy as well as horror in all who hear his tale.
• He demands our compassion to the extent that we
recognize ourselves in his existential loneliness.
• Rejected by his creator and utterly alone, he learns what he
can of human nature by eavesdropping on a family of
cottage dwellers
• He educates himself by reading a few carefully selected
titles that have fortuitously fallen across his path, among
them Paradise Lost. "Who was I? What was I? Whence did I
come?" (p. 131), he asks himself. Like Milton's Satan, who
almost inadvertently becomes the compelling protagonist
of Paradise Lost, the monster has much to recommend him.
Frankenstein
The Novel
• Despite his criminal acts, the monster's self-consciousness and his
ability to educate himself raise the question of what it means to be
human
• It is difficult to think of the monster as anything less than human in
his plea for understanding from Frankenstein: "Believe me,
Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and
humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator,
abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who
owe me nothing? they spurn and hate me" (p. 103).
• When his anonymous acts of kindness toward the cottage dwellers
are repaid with baseless hatred, we have to wonder whether it is
the world he inhabits, as opposed to something innate, that causes
him to commit atrocities.
• Nonetheless, he retains a conscience and an intense longing for
another kind of existence.
Frankenstein
The Novel
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•
•
•
•
•
Frankenstein and the monster begin with benevolent intentions and become murderers.
The monster may seem more sympathetic because he is by nature an outsider, whereas
Frankenstein deliberately removes himself from human society.
When Frankenstein first becomes engrossed in his efforts to create life, collecting materials
from the dissecting room and slaughterhouse, he breaks his ties with friends and family,
becoming increasingly isolated.
His father reprimands him for this, prompting Frankenstein to ask himself what his singleminded quest for knowledge has cost him, and whether or not it is morally justifiable.
Looking back, he concludes that it is not, contrary to his belief at the time: "if no man
allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity 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" (p. 56).
Passages such as this one suggest the possibility that Shelley is writing about the potentially
disastrous consequences of not only human ambition, but also a specific kind of masculine
ambition. The point of view here may be that of a nineteenth-century woman offering a
feminist critique of history.
Frankenstein
Lessons in Communication
First reading of Frankenstein purpose:
1. Look for communication situations
2. Study the situation
3. Using the situation, explain what you can
learn about effective communication
Frankenstein
Shelley vs Hollywood
• Film: Review “It’s Alive!” The novel begins and ends
with the story of Robert Walton set in the bleak Arctic
landscape. Most movie directors ignore the novel’s
frame story, however, and open their films with
Victor’s creation of the Creature. Watch a film version
of the novel, then compare the effect of the movie’s
opening and concluding scenes with those of the
novel. Discuss the following questions: What symbolic
importance does the Arctic frame story have in the
novel? What is lost by its omission in the film
adaptation? Why do you think the director chose to
cut this part of the novel? Which opening piques your
interest more? Explain.
Discuss with evidence
• Is Robert Walton's ambition similar to Frankenstein's, as
Frankenstein believes?
• Why is the fifteen-year-old Frankenstein so impressed with
the oak tree destroyed by lightning in a thunderstorm?
• Why does Frankenstein become obsessed with creating
life?
• Why is Frankenstein filled with disgust, calling the monster
"my enemy," as soon as he has created him? (p. 62)
• What does the monster think his creator owes him?
• Why does Frankenstein agree to create a bride for the
monster, then procrastinate and finally break his promise?
Discuss with evidence
• Why can't Frankenstein tell anyone—even his father or Elizabeth—
why he blames himself for the deaths of William, Justine, and Henry
Clerval?
• Why doesn't Frankenstein realize that the monster's pledge "I shall
be with you on your wedding-night" threatens Elizabeth as well as
himself? (p. 173)
• Why does Frankenstein find new purpose in life when he decides to
seek revenge on the monster "until he or I shall perish in mortal
conflict"? (p. 206)
• Why are Frankenstein and his monster both ultimately miserable,
bereft of human companionship, and obsessed with revenge? Are
they in the same situation at the end of the novel?
Frankenstein
Isolationism
• The Creature says, “I am malicious because I
am miserable.” The Creature is miserable
because he is “shunned and hated by all
mankind.” Do you think most people, if
treated in a similar fashion, would eventually
grow to hate society? Explain. (chart with
reasons and evidence)
Frankenstein
Nature vs Man
• Nature is an important part of the setting of
the novel. At times, it soothes Victor’s
troubled mind; at other times, it mirrors his
agitation. Choose a scene that takes place
outdoors, and analyze the role that nature
plays. (Chart with reasons and evidence)
Frankenstein
The sympathy factor
• With whom do you sympathize more—Victor
or his creation? Why? (chart the reasons and
evidence)
Frankenstein
monster or human
• What makes the creature a monster rather
than a human being? (chart reasons and
evidence)