1. Frankenstein
Mary Shelly

2. Epigraph Did I request thee, Maker, From thy clay
To mould me Man, did I
Solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
Book 10:
Milton’s Paradise Lost

3. Mary Shelley 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851 British novelist
Short story writer
Dramatist, essayist
Biographer
Best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
Father: political philosopher William Godwin
Mother: philosopher and feminist

4. Early life and tragedy Mother died giving birth to her
Raised by her father
Father married his neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont
Received a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories.

5. Mary falls in love In 1814, falls in love Percy Bysshe Shelley
They left for France and travelled through Europe
When they returned Mary is pregnant
The next two years, she and Percy faced:
They married in late 1816

6. The famous a summer 1817 A lake near Geneva, Switzerland Lord Byron
John William Polidori
Claire Clairmont
Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

7. More Tragedy The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy,
Second and third children died
Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child
In 1822, her husband drowned sailing

8. Later Years Mary Shelley returned to England
Devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and writing
The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53.

9. Shelley’s works Frankenstein
Historical novels: Valperga (1823), Perkin Warbeck (1830),
Apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826),
Final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837).
Travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844)
Biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46)
Works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society.

10. Themes and Images Auto bio-graphical Different novelistic genres:
The Godwinian novel
"employed confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society",
The Gothic novel
the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.

11. Themes cont.
Victor Frankenstein "dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave" and frequented dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses.
The healthy human form delights and intrigues
Corpses, decaying tissue, and body parts stir almost universal disgust.
Human bodies arouse strong emotion

12. Romanticism Mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter
The novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the, Victor Frankenstein
It criticizes the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism.
Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus:
He rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny.
Not portrayed positively
“His relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth“- He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition.

13. Enlightenment
People can improve society through the responsible exercise of political power
She feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos.
Her works largely criticize the way 18th-century thinkers (her parents) believed such change could be brought about.
The creature in Frankenstein reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless.
She lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected.
She rejects these Enlightenment political ideals and the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative.

14. Feminism
Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein.
the novel is a "birth myth
In Moers' view "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction".
Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity.
Frankenstein responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost
Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it but "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage”.

15. Frankenstein They arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816
They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night.[50]
Subtitle: The Modern Prometheus
Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound

16. Origins Inspiration from a dream
She drew her story's premises about the nature of life from the work of some of Europe's premier scientists and thinkers.
Scientists and physicians of her time examined life and death through experiments with
lower organisms
human anatomical studies
attempts to resuscitate drowning victims
experiments using electricity to restore life to the recently dead.

17. Origins cont. Mary Shelley’s dream Galvanism
Her dead infant daughter held before a fire, rubbed vigorously, and restored to life.
Galvanism
1790s Italian physician Luigi Galvani demonstrated the electrical basis of nerve impulses
made frog muscles twitch by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine.
Mary Shelley talks with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley
"a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things."