Mary Shelley

• story inspired by "waking dream" - envisioned a creature constructed brought to life through secret science

  • wanted to "frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night"
• Monster being left nameless in Shelley's novel - 1931 film adaptation lacks intelligence, moral character & emotional complexity
• contemporary readers state Frankenstein presented negative view of science

  • Shelley used it as metaphor for any kind of irresponsible action - concerned with politics of the era
  • to warn against unchecked political forces
• distaste for government that didn't benefit most people - antimonarchy, anti anyone with absolute control
• believed in universal love - care about each other and government should care about their people
• monster's journey reflects Shelly's thoughts on human nature -believed people were inherently good & corrupt systems corrupt people
• had a skeptical eyes on the Enlightenment celebration of science and technology - concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction
• her reverie unleashed her deepest subconscious anxieties, natural fears of very young women embarking on process of pregnancy, giving birth and mothering

  • central theme = Victor's failure as parent & consequences of parental abandonment
• Percy Shelley misunderstood his wife's intention and distorted her ideas - straightforward/colloquial sentence structures became more complex

  • her voice = sentimental not abstract
• By 1831, Shelley endured countless losses convinced that human events are not decided by personal choice/free will but material forces beyond control of human agency
• portrays the bourgeois family more negatively - women are oppressed, silenced & sacrificed
• Shelley endows creature with features of sublimity - used to describe mind's confrontation with the unknowable, overwhelming & infinite
• Foucault's theory of heterotopias of "other spaces" set apart spatially & temporarily from rest of world

  • Shelley's arctic promises positive change and transformation BUT threatens death & destruction
• Graf: increase of Russian exploration through the Arctic threatened Britain's desire to control region
• Garrison: frame narrative of Frankenstein is less committed to depicting wonders of arctic landscape BUT using temptations & illusions as analogy for flaws in imperial and scientific reasoning
• mother died from an infection during childbirth, father remarried women not fond of her - alienation was amplified, felt removed from family & father's affection
• 1816 "The Year Without a Summer" - eruption of Mount Tambora caused global catastrophe

  • loss of sun caused cold temperatures, darkness & food shortage around world
• • mother = radical writer Mary Wollstonecraft
  • father = novelist & political philosopher William Godwin
• her mother 1792 published classic manifesto of sexual equality "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"
• grief debilitated her "I can never write verses...except under the influence of strong sentiment"
• needed to support her child & Sir Timothy Shelley (father in law) cut off avenue of income - threatened to withdraw all support for grandchild
• began tour of continent keeping a journal & copies of all her letters
• 1818 - published Frankenstein anonymously out of concern that she might lose custody over children
• 4 stories in 1: allegory, fable, epistolary novel, autobiography

  • to explain her ”hideous progeny”
• Chris Baldick + Adriana Cracium: novel appears to be heretical and revolutionary BUT also counter-revolutionary

  • depending on what theme you look at
• Frankenstein participates in debate over abolition (Haitian revolution) & continued slave rebellions in Jamaica

  • raised deeper questions about liberty & equality
• Britain enacted laws abolishing importation of slaves (1807) - continued through decision in favour of emancipation
• Percy Shelley urged not immediate but gradual emancipation

  • feared that if violently oppressed + denied education, as well as unconditionally freed they would seek vengeance of blood
• her depiction if creature - physical distinctiveness of Africans - characterisation became caricature onstage

  • 1823 stage production of Frankenstein: actor wore "colour that identified him less as dead than as coloured
  • production mentioned by George Canning - Foreign Secretary & leader of HOC
• Shelley: "Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful" - indicates significance of female empowerment to contemporary & modern readers