Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

   Frankenstein can be read as a tale of what happens when a man tries to create a child without a woman. It can, however, also be read as an account of a woman's anxieties and insecurities about her own creative and reproductive capabilities. The story of Frankenstein is the first articulation of a woman's experience of pregnancy and related fears. Mary Shelley, in the development and education of the monster, discusses child development and education and how the nurturing of a loving parent is extremely important in the moral development of an individual. Thus, in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley examines her own fears and thoughts about pregnancy, childbirth, and child development.

The life of the monster can be related to the motherless life led by Shelley. Shelley’s mother too left her as soon as she was born, and as a result, she had quite an arduous life. Combined with her father’s financial woes, her tumultuous relationship with her stepmother meant that Shelley did not have an ideal childhood, which would have had a serious impact on her personality. She had to put up with a lot of miseries when she grew up, and was subjected to lifelong condemnation from the society because of her affair with the married Shelley.

The main components of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein come from her own personal experiences and the society she lived in. Being a woman, Mary Shelley was subject to the social norms and traditions of treating women as lesser equals to men. In Johanna Smith’s critical analysis of Frankenstein she says that “ the man’s public sphere of commerce and … the woman’s private sphere of home and passivity” (313) were very much present in Mary’s society. Mary was left alone to deal with very troubling events, “the deaths of [her] two daughters... and the death of [her] three-and-a-half-year-old son William” (10). It is very difficult for a parent to comprehend the loss of a child, much less a mother.

A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques.  Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love.  To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”.  Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility.  Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s

    Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is commonly misrepresented as a horror story. Frankenstein’s creation is know by most to be an evil monster out to ravage the world around him. In reality the novel shows a story of a neglected loving creature, that has been unfairly labeled as a brute due to his unattractive appearance. Realities as abysmal as that of Frankenstein’s creation are hard to dream up, and indeed Shelley’s life shares many common themes with her characters. The idea of neglect and resentment so apparent in her novel was not a fantasy created by Shelley but a reflection of the emotions she was feeling at the time of writing. Her family was far from supportive in her childhood, and

Mary Shelley’s first novel, Frankenstein, was published on January 1, 1818. This novel evidently employs “undeniably unorthodox subjects” (Poovey 332). In this work, Shelley narrates the tales of Victor Frankenstein, an idiosyncratic scientist, his grotesque and “wretched” creation and the disastrous events that befall (Shelley 37). Shelley thoroughly represents the gothic theme of isolation by replicating the guilty and fearful emotions of Victor Frankenstein. The novel’s claim to tragedy and murder, which is exemplified throughout every page of the novel, would appear to be the catalyst for Victor Frankenstein’s isolation. Yet in fact, these disastrous events occur are only the result of Victor’s self-inflicted isolation. Victor severs all connections to the outside world, including his family, friends and society; causing him to live a life of torment and isolation. An analysis of Shelley’s “monstrous” character, Victor Frankenstein, affirms how the development of fearful and defensive characteristics had served as a catalyst for the confinement of a self-inflicted life of isolation.

This essay uses the biographical approach quite heavily. Moers believed that Mary Shelley used her experience in motherhood to construct the birth of the monster. “Here, Mary Shelley’s book is the most interesting, the most interesting, the most powerful, and the most feminine: in the motif of the revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences” (320). Childbirth was often glamorized by men who wrote about childbirth, having never gone through it. Shelley knew about the gritty details

A romantic life full of pain and abandonment could only be given the monstrous form of "Frankenstein." Mary Shelley 's life gave birth to an imaginary victim full of misery and loneliness and placed him as the protagonist of one of her most famous and greatest works of art. As most people would assume, he is not just a fictional character, but in fact a creature who desperately demonstrates Shelley 's tragedies and losses during the age of the Romantic Era. Since Mary Shelley 's birth there have been numerous losses in her life. One extremely dominating event in Shelley 's life was the death of her mother. Soon after, her father remarried and Shelley entered a battle as the victim of a fight for love. In her

Brennan explains how Mary Shelley has several characters (Victor, the monster, and Walton) dealing with the loss dealing with the loss of their mother. My Monster / My Self, written by Barbara Johnson tells how “Frankenstein” is more than a story, it is an autobiography of Mary Shelley’s life. In this essay Barbara Johnson explains how Mary Shelly was capable of telling her story through male characters in a time when her own personal autobiography would have been highly unacceptable. Laura P. Claridge ’s essay Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein attempts to convince readers that certain characters (Victor, the monster, and Walton) are examples of what happens to children who are not parented correctly.

As Moers asserts, Shelley’s text reflects the trauma of birth and death that occurred in her life (96). Additionally, Frankenstein creating a monstrous creation reflects “the anxieties of a woman who, as daughter, mistress, and mother, was a bearer of death” (98). As Frankenstein was written by a woman with an all male perspective, it could be debated that Shelley was against feminism as well as women creating life. Therefore, Shelley was ambivalent about motherhood, which explains why the text is seen by critics such as Ellen Moers as a “birth myth”. However, as a counterargument Shelley was a feminist because the text can be seen as a social commentary of the existing patriarchal world led by men.

What purpose does it serve to have multiple narrators telling a story? In Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein, three main narrators tell the story about the creation of a monster and the events that follow. The job of narrator shifts between Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster that Victor creates. As each narrator shares his own recollection of the events that occurred, new facts are introduced to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Although Frankenstein uses multiple narrators to tell the story, it is important to look at the effects it might have on the stories accuracy. In this essay, I will closely examine the motives, differences, and similarities of each narrator to see what influences, if any, they have on the narrative.

    In the statement made by Frankenstein’s Creature to Walter, Mary Shelley utilizes emotionally charged diction and biblical allusions in order to demonstrate the motif of abortion. The strong language, that the Creature uses regarding itself, defines the feelings of great loss and depression, such emotions that it’s creator, Victor Frankenstein, felt throughout the novel. The quotation shows that the creator hates the Creature’s construction and wishes it was destroyed. The conversation with Walter allows the Creature to lament his given life and neglection thereby providing a statement of humanness, what the qualifications are to be human, and how one deserves the things a human does. There is inherently self-hatred and loneliness that the Creature feels, being the only one of it’s kind and abandoned to its own devices. The following underlines the plot with Shelley’s own experiences with miscarriage, a form of abortion. As these ideologies combine to form the role of a creator and creation, Shelley’s characterization of the Creature, being rejected and abused, portrays the internal and external influences the Creature experiences with it’s being.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English author who lived in London during the Romantic period. Born to radical intellectual parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Mary Shelley’s life was full of fascinating and tragic experiences, ones that no doubt inspired her while she was writing her gothic horror classic Frankenstein. Due to this, Frankenstein can be considered an indirect reflection of Shelley's own turbulent life, as well as the political, economic and sociologic beliefs of her time. One specific theme highlighted in Frankenstein was the concept of the death of an innocent child, William, which is reminiscent of the tragic deaths of two of Shelley’s own children. “William is dead...murdered!” (Volume I, Chapter VI, p 109).

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has undoubtedly withstood the test of time. Frankenstein’s direct association with fundamental Gothic literature is extremely renowned. However, the novel’s originality is derived from the foundational thematic values found within the relationship (or lack there of) between Victor Frankenstein and the monster he had created, in combination with a fascinatingly captivating plot. Understandably, Frankenstein can often be associated with a multitude of concepts; however, in this particular instance, the circumstances in the book seemed remarkably coherent with Shelley’s Romantic beliefs in preserving the natural world, and one’s natural existence. These values present themselves as metaphorical symbols that

     Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s