Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Something about it

This work was written in 1816 when Mary Shelley and her “husband”, Percy Bysshe Shelley, were in Switzerland, on holiday, invited by Byron. She told that she was inspired by a dream (or a nightmare). This work was published, under an anonymous author, in 1818 and immediately became a best seller. This is a complex work, because there are three narrators:

• 1^st: This is Robert Walton, an English explorer, who writes a letter to his sister telling her that he met the Dr. Frankenstein, a Swiss Scientist who told him his story.
• 2^nd: This is Dr. Frankenstein who tells the story and he talks about his experience with the Monster.
• 3^rd: This is the Monster, who talks through his Creator.

They aren’t omniscient, but they use the 1^st singular person to tell the story. The narration is a link between the two forms to tell a story.

This is a Gothic Novel, so it presents a mixture of Romantic elements and Horror ones; she talks about feelings, emotions and nature but using horror emblems, for example she wants to show the dangers of the nature describing supernatural events or bad weather.

Main themes

M. Shelley describes romantic elements but also social ones, in fact she talks about social injustices, alienation, anguish and the typical Romantic Hero. This work wants to criticize the Romantic Age, giving to the nature a terrible meaning.

Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster are the same because they symbolize the Man and Shelley wants to show that a man can be rational and irrational at the same time. The same thing appears in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R. L. Stevenson.

One of the most important points is surely the creation of the monster: Dr. Frankenstein challenges God and Nature, creating a man without the divine help, but also excluding women. It means that in this case, a man can create another man without female help.

This work is also known as “The modern Prometheus” because, as Frankenstein, Prometheus was a giant who stole the fire from the Greek Gods and he gave it to common men.

The historical period

This work belongs to the 19^th century, precisely to the “Congress of Vienna”-time. This Congress was established, by the great countries (Austria, Russia, and the UK), to come back to the ancient order and the ancient monarchies, soon after French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars; because of it, France lost a lot of countries, previously got thanks to Napoleon.

Soon after the Congress of Vienna, there is the birth of the Victorian Age in England, which is a golden period but a horror one at the same time. In fact, a lot of writers, as Dickens in “Coketown” and “Oliver Twist”, will criticize it.

In 1851, to celebrate the new English Power, there was the first Expo (the Great Exhibition) and the presentation of the Crystal Palace. This is the period of Colonialism, because the European Countries want to be bigger more and more. We can assist to the colonization of Africa.

During the second part of the century, there is the birth of the Italian Kingdom and the German Empire. In 1886, the USA receive from France the Statue of Liberty and in 1889, during the second Expo in Paris, France shows to the world the most important symbol of Paris and France too: The Eiffel Tower.

In 1894 we can assist to the case of Dreyfus and Zola will talk about it. This is the period of Socialism and Marx who talks about the economy of the world. The birth of Existentialism with Nietzsche (with the Overman who destroys the role of God and old values), Kierkegaard (and the three ways to live) and Schopenhauer and the conception of will. This is the period of the Romantic Age, Classicism and Impressionism.

Mary Shelley: something about her life

M. Shelley was born in London in 1797, her mother was a great philosopher who fought for women’s rights and her father was a political writer. Her mother died soon after her birth. She didn’t have a happy childhood because she lost her mother and she grew up with an idea: she was a girl/woman. In this period a woman was considered more inferior than a man, so there were a lot of limits for her.

She had a particular education because she attended each writer, as Shelley or Coleridge, who attended her house. She fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley and they left to France and Switzerland where she wrote her most famous book: Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus.

She loved the Gothic Novel (a mixture of Romantic elements and Horror ones). She wrote novels and poetry also about her husband, but her father-in-law, Timothy, prohibited her to publish those works. She returned to England in 1823 where she died in 1851.

Summary

Il romanzo di M.