Mary Wollstonecraft
- mother of Mary Shelley
- ‘A vindication of a woman’s rights’
- advocate for female rights
French revolution
- politicisation of lower classes
- circling Jacobin novels
- the Enlightenment
- inspiration to writers: many used monster to demonise revolution, others used as a metaphor as feudalism etc.
Growing interest of science
- Georgian/Victorian period - growing interest in science and alchemy
- excitement of the taboo and the illicit
infant mortality
- high infant mortality rate
- usurping nurturing mother role
Charles Darwin
Theory of Evolution 1859
- led to many anxieties:
link between humans and animals - suggestion that humans could be savage and primitive
Literary - Marxist perspective
monster = working class
monster = working class
- birth will mark him for life even though his education is the same
When was it written?
1818 - Georgian society
- published anonymously
- many questioned how much of Frankenstein was her own work and how much was her lover’s
- mid-1800s Emily Bronte also published Wuthering Heights under male pseudonym Ellis Bell
Structuralist perspective - Walton’s role
- Walton’s narrative at beginning of novel = reader’s perspective
- Frankenstein’s story is a warning to Walton and thus to readers
concept of evil
until now a largely religious one, became secularised by modern anthropology and psychology - now evil is not an external force but something within
Shelley’s parents
- both radical writers
mother a feminist
father placed great emphasis on the value of education - Shelley was unusually well educated for a woman
doubling
‘double was a manifestation of the evil within a character’
Shelley’s father, Godwin
proposed a philosophy of “perfectibility” - humans should strive to find a way to live without sexuality or mortality
- Shelley dedicated novel to him
physical deformity + criminality
physical deformity linked pseudo-scientific studies to criminality. Physiognomy suggested a character’s morality could be read in the shape of their skull and facial features
‘suspended animation’
interest in states of ‘suspended animation’ - fainting, coma, sleeping, etc. Mary Shelley follows contemporary scientific language when describing episodes of fainting in novel
‘Murder Act’ 1752
1752
punishment of dissection to hanging - enabled scientists to use bodies of executed criminals in experiments
Prometheus
- key influence on Romantic writers
- Byron wrote a poem called Prometheus 1816
- Percy Shelley wrote a play Prometheus Unbound 1818
- wrote sympathetically of the character who sought to give knowledge away to the people from the Gods
- considered him a revolutionary and a ‘freedom fighter’
Shelley’s children
daughter died only few days after birth
- later said, saw baby in a dream and when she warmed it by the fire it came back to life
Luigi Galvani
Galvani passed an electric current through dead frog’s legs
Romanticism
- reaction to Industrial revolution
- against belief that rationalism was more important than anything else
- looked for radical, adventurous, imaginative new ways of thinking
- valued intense emotions , nature = inspirational
