Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist,
short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer,
best known for her Gothic fiction Frankenstein:
or, The Modern Prometheus.
She also edited and promoted the works of her husband,
the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Mary was born in 1797 to well-known parents:
author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
and philosopher William Godwin.
Unfortunately, her mother died as the result of Mary's birth.
Mary was therefore raised by her father and a much resented stepmother.
When Mary was sixteen she met the young poet Shelley,
a devotee of her father's teachings.
In 1816, they went abroad again,
this time spending time with Byron and his friend in Geneva.
There Byron suggests that they should all write a ghost story.
Mary writes Frankenstein, the only story of the four that was ever to be published as a novel.
Later that same year, Percy and Mary got married.
The last years of their married life were filled with disaster for Mary.
Her half-sister died, as did two of her children.
Mary became depressed, a tendency she probably inherited from her mother.
She was only partly relieved by the birth of Percy, their only surviving child.
Mary and Shelley eventually moved to Italy
where Percy was drowned during a sailing trip in 1822.
Mary was determined to keep the memory of her late husband alive.
She published several editions of Shelley's writings
and added notes and prefaces to them.
Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel
that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein,
a young Swiss student who discovers the secret of animating lifeless matter.
By assembling body parts,
Victor creates a monster
who vows revenge on his creator after being rejected from society.
Mary started to write the story when she was 18,
and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London in 1818,
when she was 20.
The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form,
letters exchanged between Captain Robert Walton and his sister.
During a trip to explore the North Pole,
his crew rescues a nearly frozen man named Victor Frankenstein.
Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic monster
and he tells the captain what happens to him.
Victor begins by telling of his childhood,
the happy time spent with his brothers and Elizabeth,
the orphaned daughter of an Italian nobleman,
with whom Victor later falls in love.
Weeks before he leaves for the University in Germany,
his mother dies of scarlet fever.
Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief.
He develops a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter.
With this technique, he intends to create a beautiful superman,
but instead of that, he makes a hideous monster with yellow eyes and skin
that barely conceals the muscle tissue and blood vessels underneath.
Shocked by what he sees, victor leaves the lab and the monster escapes.
Victor falls ill from the experience and is nursed back to health by Henry.
After a four-month recovery,
he returns home when he learns of the murder of his brother William.
Upon arriving in Geneva, Victor sees the Creature near the crime scene
and climbing a mountain, leading him to believe his creation is responsible.
Justine Moritz, William's nanny,
is convicted of the crime after William's locket,
which has contained a miniature portrait of Caroline,
is found in her pocket.
Victor is helpless to stop her from being hanged,
as he knows no one would believe his story.
Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor retreats into the mountains
where the Creature finds him and describes his experience to victor.
He wants to make friends with people but his appearance frightens them away.
In loneliness, he then swears revenge on his creator
for bringing him into a world that hated him.
He travels to Victor's family estate and murders William.
The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like himself.
He promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American wilderness,
never to reappear, if Victor grants his request.
Should Victor refuses his request,
the Creature also threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones
and not stop until he completely ruins him.
Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees.
Working on the female creature,
fearful of the terrible consequence of his action,
he tears apart the unfinished female creature after he sees the Creature,
who has indeed followed Victor, watching through a window.
The Creature vows that he will "be with [him] on [his] wedding night."
Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life,
believing that the Creature will kill him after finally becoming happy.
On his wedding day, while Victor searches the house and grounds,
the Creature strangles Elizabeth to death.
Victor tries to shoot him, but the Creature escapes.
After getting back to Geneva, Victor's father, weakened by age
and by the death of his precious Elizabeth, dies a few days later.
Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature to the North Pole,
but collapses from exhaustion and hypothermia before he can find his quarry.
At the end of Victor's narrative,
Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story.
Victor dies shortly thereafter,
but Walton discovers the Creature on his ship,
mourning over Victor's body.
The Creature tells Walton that Victor's death has not brought him peace;
rather, he is left completely alone.
The Creature vows to kill himself
so that no others will ever know of his existence.
Walton watches as the Creature drifts away on an ice raft
that is soon lost in darkness and distance, never to be seen again.
Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel
of the Romantic movement,
and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction.
It was also a warning against the expansion of modern man
in the Industrial Revolution,
alluded to in the novel's subtitle The Modern Prometheus.
The story has had an influence across literature
and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of
horror stories and films.
As one of the earliest science fiction,
like later science fiction,
it holds an ambiguous attitudes towards science:
science and technology may being the negative consequence as well as convenience.
The story also warns against the ruthless and limitless pursuit of knowledge,
which is very dangerous.
Victor’s discovery of the secret of life
and his action of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him,
which serves as a negative example of
how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.