Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature from different body parts in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18 and staying in Bath, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, away from Frankenstein Castle, where, about a century earlier, Johann Konrad Dippel, an alchemist, had engaged in experiments. She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, particularly for her lover and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In 1816—at the suggestion of Lord Byron—Mary, Percy, John Polidori and Byron himself, each agreed to try writing a ghost story.
After thinking for days, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. The novel was first published anonymously in 1818, and in 1831, a revised edition was published under Mary Shelley's name. This version included significant stylistic revisions, a new preface describing the story's conception, and a more explicitly moral tone.
Frankenstein is one of the best-known works of English literature. Infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name Frankenstein has often been used to refer to the monster.
Plot summary
, born in Naples to an upper-class Genevese family, spends his youth obsessed with alchemy. As he grows older, he develops an interest in modern sciences such as chemistry and electricity. After his mother Caroline dies of scarlet fever, Victor leaves home to attend the University of Ingolstadt. Through his studies, Victor discovers a new way to create life, assembling human body parts stolen from charnel houses and fresh graves, which he uses to create a large and grotesque humanoid creature. When the creature awakens, Victor is repelled by it and flees in terror, returning the next day to find the creature gone.The newly conscious creature runs away, discovers fire, and learns to avoid humans, who find him frightening. He finds a hovel attached to a small house, which lets him observe a family while remaining unseen. As the family teaches their language to a foreigner, the creature also learns to speak and write. He also finds a collection of books, including Paradise Lost, and learns to read. He reads some papers that had been in the clothes he had taken from Ingolstadt, through which he learns the truth of his origin and the identity of his creator. He finally reveals himself to the family's blind father while he is alone, who treats him with kindness. When the rest of the family return however, they are horrified by his appearance and chase him away. The creature then saves a young girl from drowning, only to be shot by her father, who had misunderstood, and thought the creature had attacked her.
Embittered by humanity, the creature travels to Geneva to confront his creator; upon arrival, he encounters Victor's younger brother, William. Realizing that William belongs to the same family, the creature kills him, then frames the family's servant Justine for his death. Victor suspects his creature was responsible, but does not intervene while Justine is tried and executed. Later, while hiking on Mer de Glace, Victor once more encounters the creature. The creature relays his story and asks Victor to create a female companion, which he believes will be his only chance at happiness. Victor consents to this.
Victor and his friend Henry Clerval leave the European mainland for Britain, where Victor establishes a laboratory in Orkney. While working on the female creature, Victor imagines his creations giving birth, and fearfully decides to destroy the incomplete female. The original creature issues a warning that he will meet Victor on his wedding night, and murders Henry in an act of revenge.
Victor suffers a mental breakdown, then returns home. Back in Geneva, Victor marries Elizabeth Lavenza, a childhood friend born in Italy. Fulfilling his threat, the creature murders her on the wedding night. Days later, Victor's father Alphonse dies of grief. With no remaining family, Victor vows revenge and pursues the creature, eventually following him to the Arctic.
Chasing the creature across Arctic ice, Victor nearly dies from exhaustion and hypothermia, but is rescued by Captain Robert Walton, who is leading an expedition to the North Pole. Victor recounts his story to Walton and encourages the crew to continue their expedition; instead, they decide to abandon their journey and turn back. Victor vows that he will go on chasing the creature, but in his weakened state, he dies aboard the ship. As the ship leaves the Arctic, the creature comes on board. He mourns Victor's death, tells Walton he plans to burn himself on a pyre, and departs.
Author's background
Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from infection eleven days after giving birth to her. Shelley grew close to her father, William Godwin. Godwin hired a nurse, who briefly cared for her and her half-sister, before marrying his second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, who did not like the close bond between Shelley and her father. The resulting friction caused Godwin to favour his other children.Shelley's father was a famous author of the time, and her education was of great importance to him, although it was not formal. Shelley grew up surrounded by her father's friends, writers, and persons of political importance, who often gathered at the family home. This inspired her authorship at an early age. Mary, at the age of sixteen, met Percy Bysshe Shelley while he was visiting her father. Godwin disapproved of the relationship between his daughter and an older, married man, so they fled to France along with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. On 22 February 1815, Shelley gave birth prematurely to her first child, Clara, who died two weeks later.
In the summer of 1816, Mary, Percy, and Claire took a trip to visit Claire's lover, Lord Byron, in Geneva. Poor weather conditions, more akin to winter, forced Byron and the visitors to stay indoors. Byron suggested that he, Mary, Percy, and Byron's physician, John Polidori, each try writing a ghost story. Mary was 20 years old when her novel Frankenstein was published.
Literary influences
Shelley's work was heavily influenced by that of her parents. Her father was famous for his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for the 1792 essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set in Switzerland, similar to the setting in Frankenstein. Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion by Madame de Genlis, and Ovid, with the use of individuals identifying the problems with society. Ovid also inspires the use of Prometheus in the book's subtitle.The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are evident in the novel. In The Frankenstein of the French Revolution, author Julia Douthwaite posits that Shelley probably acquired some ideas for Frankenstein's character from Humphry Davy's book Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he had written that,
science has... bestowed upon man powers which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings around him...
References to the French Revolution run through the novel; a possible source is François-Félix Nogaret's Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant, a political parable about scientific progress featuring an inventor named "Wak-wik-vauk-an-son-frankésteïn", then abridged as, who creates a life-sized automaton. However there is no evidence Shelley had read it.
Both Frankenstein and the monster quote passages from Percy Shelley's 1816 poem, "Mutability", and its theme of the role of the subconscious is discussed in prose. Percy Shelley's name never appears as the author of the poem, although the novel credits other quoted poets by name. Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is associated with the theme of guilt and William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" with that of innocence.
Many writers and historians have attempted to associate several then-popular natural philosophers with Shelley's work because of several notable similarities. Two of the most noted natural philosophers among Shelley's contemporaries were Italian Giovanni Aldini, who made many public attempts at human reanimation through bio-electric Galvanism in London, and Johann Konrad Dippel, who was supposed to have developed chemical means to extend the life span of humans. While Shelley was aware of both of these men and their activities, she makes no mention of or reference to them or their experiments in any of her published or released notes.
Ideas about life and death discussed by Percy and Byron were of great interest to scientists of the time. They drew on the theories of Erasmus Darwin and the experiments of Luigi Galvani, as well as the work of James Lind. Mary joined these conversations, and the ideas of Darwin, Galvani, and perhaps Lind are reflected in her novel.
Shelley's personal experiences also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The loss of her mother, the relationship with her father, and the death of her first child are thought to have inspired the monster and his separation from parental guidance. In a 1965 issue of The Journal of Religion and Health a psychologist proposed that the theme of guilt stemmed from her not feeling good enough for Percy because of the loss of their child.