Frankenstein

• Very Brief Plot Summary


  • Letters 1-4: Letters from Robert Walton to his sister - he is an explorer and has found Victor Frankenstein in poor health on the ice of the Arctic. He takes him on board his ship and Victor tells his story.
  • Chapters 1-5: Victor tells of his early life with his family and how he left them for Ingolstadt to study at university. There Victor embarks on creating a man from body parts and eventually succeeds but immediately regrets his actions.
  • Chapters 7-8: Victor hears his younger brother has been killed, knows it is the Creature. He meets the Creature in Chamonix and the Creature begins to tell his tale.
  • Chapters 11-16: The Creature tells of how he hid and observed a family for months. He learned how to speak and how to read. He realises his looks isolate him from society. He tries to approach the blind old man of the poor family, but is discovered and driven away. He then swears revenge. He accidentally meets Victor's brother and strangles him to get at Victor.
  • Chapters 17-19: The Creature asks Victor to make him a companion. Eventually Victor agrees. Henry and Victor begin a 2-year tour of Europe. They go to England and Scotland first.
  • Chapters 19-21: Victor arranges to be in the Orkneys so he can begin work alone. He changes his mind about the second creature and decides to meet up with Henry. He sets out in a boat but there is a storm and he ends up washing up on a shore. Victor is immediately accused of murder. When he realises it is Henry who is dead, Victor falls ill. His father comes out to see him. In court Victor is found innocent of the crime.
  • Chapters 22-24: Victor marries Elizabeth. The Creature kills Elizabeth and Victor's father dies soon after from shock. Victor swears revenge and follows the Creature as far as the Arctic where he meets Walton. Victor dies and the Creature is found crying over the body. The Creature regrets his actions and goes off into the ice to die.
• Context


  • Mary Shelley: Born in 1797 to radical parents, Shelley was brought up to question society's norms. She was encouraged to read and think and met lots of intellectual thinkers of the time, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. Shelley was extremely interested in science.
  • Scientific influences: A lot of scientists were experimenting with electricity during Shelley's life. Notably, Aldini toured the country reanimating corpses using electricity. Shelley would also have known two leading scientists of the day, Nicholson and Davy, who both experimented with electrolysis to break down compounds.
  • Religion: The Church of England was the accepted religion in England. Many clergy were also scientists as it was believed that science would validate religious truths. As science progressed, many people became concerned that scientific discoveries were undermining the teachings of the church. For example, fossils showed the Earth to be much older than the 6000 years stated in the Bible.
• Frankenstein, Chapter 4: 'Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.'
• Frankenstein, Chapter 5: '... but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.'
• The Creature, Chapter 10: 'All men hate the wretched; how then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!'
• The Creature, Chapter 13: 'Was I, a monster, a blot upon the earth from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?'
• The Creature, Chapter 14: 'I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers...'
• The Creature, Chapter 15: 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?'
• The Creature, Chapter 15: 'Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.'
• The Creature, Chapter 16: 'My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.'
• The Creature, Chapter 17: 'My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal.'
• Frankenstein, Chapter 20: 'Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?'
• The Creature, Chapter 20: 'You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains - revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!'
• Frankenstein, Chapter 21: 'To me the walls of a dungeon or a palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned forever...'
• Frankenstein, Chapter 24: 'Oh! When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live?'
• The Creature, Chapter 24: 'The fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even the enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.'
• Characters


  • Victor Frankenstein: A brilliant scientist and scholar. One of the main characters.
  • The Creature: This is the 'man' created by Victor, he is not named.
  • Robert Walton: An explorer who opens and closes the novel with his letters.
  • Alphonse Frankenstein: Victor's father who is very supportive and understanding.
  • William Frankenstein: Younger brother of Victor.
  • Justine Moritz: Adopted by the Frankenstein family but wrongfully hanged for murder.
  • Elizabeth Lavenza: The adopted daughter of Victor's parents. In love with Victor.
  • Caroline Beaufort: Victor's mother. Dies of scarlet fever.
  • Henry Clerval: Victor's best friend who is his opposite in temperament.
  • De Lacey Family: A poor family who are observed by the Creature.
  • M Waldman: Professor of chemistry who encourages Victor's love of science.
  • M Krempe: Professor of natural philosophy. He makes Victor start his studies again.
  • Mr Kirwin: An Irish town magistrate who accuses Victor of the murder of Henry.
• Themes


  • Dangerous Knowledge
  • Life and Existence
  • Secrecy and Lies
  • Appearances
  • Nature
  • Revenge
• Key Vocabulary


  • inanimate
  • tragic flaw
  • Romanticism
  • petrified
  • alienation
  • sublime nature
  • disaster
  • dangerous knowledge
  • moral/immoral
  • grotesque
  • irrational
  • monster
  • prejudiced
  • electricity
  • failure
  • unwanted
  • consequences
  • tragedy
• Language and Techniques


  • pathetic fallacy
  • symbolism
  • metaphors
  • irony
  • symbols and motifs
  • metaphors
  • personification
  • simile
  • brutal imagery
  • description
  • secrets
  • soul
  • nature
  • life
  • death
  • dream
  • horror
• Keywords to Look out For
• Doppelgänger


  Someone's double or alter ego, a "look-alike" or "double walker"
• Doppelgänger in literature


  • Usually shaped as a twin, shadow or a mirror image (character foil) of a protagonist
• Percy Shelley


  Unorthodox opinions on things like God, vegetarianism, free love and nudity
• Percy Shelley's scientific aura

  • Regularly turned his studies into laboratories, experimented with chemistry and galvanism, obsessed with making his hair stand on end using the Van de Graff generator
• Percy Shelley sympathised with Frankenstein's political interests and debates on nature v nurture and its ultimate refusal to discriminate between perpetrator and victim
• Percy Shelley worked on drafting the manuscript and would have discussed it with Mary Shelley throughout its conception
• After Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley worked tirelessly to ensure his literary reputation would survive, editing and helping to publish collections of his works
• The relationship between Frankenstein and his creation

  Mirroring their own, both before and after death
• Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818 to suppress both Shelley's identity and her gender
• Allowing Percy Shelley to write the preface suggested his authorship of the work and the absence of her name on the title page confirms the marginal presence of female writers at the time
• The book is dedicated to Shelley's father and his 1794 text 'Things as they are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams' analyses the workings of power and included a psychological double
• Shelley's text attacks some of Godwin's idealistic views, particularly his belief that humans were perfectable and capable of existing without the intervention of government if they were given free will
• Wollstonecraft contends that society will degenerate without educated women, particularly because mothers are the primary educators of young children
• Romanticism


  A body of artists and writers who believed that the imagination and emotions were the most important elements of life, and believed in the power of nature
• Jean Jacques Rousseau


  Believed that ideally, humans could be most happy in an innocent, solitary state of nature; interaction with society causes unhappiness and destruction
• Until the middle of the 18th century, children were born with 'original sin' and had to spend their childhood under strict instruction to become God-fearing adults
• The Romantics believed that children were born a 'blank slate' and that their development and moral character were formed from the experiences they had as they grew up
• The subtitle 'The Modern Prometheus'

  A reference to Victor and the most ambitious Greek Titan who moulded human beings from clay and bestowed upon them the dangerous and enabling gift of fire
• Romantics saw Prometheus


  • As an emblem of the creative rebel, often punished for his achievements (like Prometheus being chained to a rock by the gods to have his liver ripped out nightly by an eagle)