Task on Marry Shelley's "Frankenstein"

     Brief introduction of Marry Shelley 

Biographical Information

                            Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly was born in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the daughter of the two  radical thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. William Godwin described her as 'singularly bold, somewhat imperious,and active of mind'. Mary Shelley did not receive any formal education but from an early age she received great intellectual stimulus.Her father's house was a meeting point of famous philosophers and poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was also said that or a kind of anecdotes about her was that as a young girl Marry Shelly used to hide behind a sofa while Coleridge read aloud his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Which exercised a great influence on her novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

She is also known as the wife of romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelly. In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont near Geneva,Switzerland where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

 She is well known for her great Gothic novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Marry Shelley was also a skilled editor and critic, an influential travel writer, a literary historian, a devoted mother, and a dabbler in verse as well as in the new genre of the short story.

 Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein. This novel remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations.

Mainly Marry Shelley's novels were based on popular issues in her society at the time of writing.Themes are crucial ideas that are explored throughout a literary work. 

Her well known novels are:

Valperga (1823)

Perkin Warbeck (1830)

The Last Man (1826)

Lodore (1835)

Falkner (1837)

Her lesser known works include the travel book Rambles in Geremany and Italy(1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia(1829-46), support the growning view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.

Let's have a brief view on the Mary Shelley's well known work:

 Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley started to write Frankenstein in 1816.At that time she was in Switzerland with Percy Shelley and the other friends among whom Lord Byron who challenged them to write a horror story . That's why she started to write Frankenstein in the tradition of Gothic novel. Several factors such as Mary Shelley's sense of guilt for the death of her mother,her anxieties, the strain of the difficult relationship with her father, the reading of ghost stories, scientific speculations, all came together at one point creating that nightmarish dream that horrified her so much.

Plot in Frankenstein

 Basically this story is introduced to us by a series of letters written by Captain Walton to his sister, is about a brilliant and overly ambitious Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein. Victor created a monster by assembling together the various parts of corpses. The creature which he generated and also looked like a monstrous was endowed with human feelings. Because of his ugly look he was rejected by civilized society and started to feel lonely and suffered from isolation. As a result he asked Victor Frankenstein to create female companion for him.Firstly he agreed but when it was almost completed, he destroyed it disgusted by his own creation.As a result Monster turned into anger and murdered the Frankenstein's wife Elizabeth on their wedding night and then runs away. Victor followed him to the Arctic to   destroy him and there he met Captain Walton.This leaded us to the beginning of the story when Walton finds Frankenstein mortally wounded by the creature and was captivated by the doctor's powerful story. After few days Walton found the monster crying over his creator's dead body repented of his actions.He then disappeared on an ice raft in the Artistic sea.

Major themes in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

1. birth and creation
   Frankenstein succeeds in creating a 'human' life form very much like God does.
2. alienation
   Victor chooses to be alienated because of his desire for knowledge.
3. family
   Frankenstein presents the value of the domestic circle. It demonstrates that lack of connection to either family or society leads to murder, tragedy and despair.
4. dangerous Knowledge
   It is an insane pursuit of knowledge that proves to be dangerous. Victor's act of creation results in the destruction of everyone dear to him. Likewise Walton finds himself dangerously trapped between sheets of ice
5. ambition
   Frankenstein shows that human beings are deeply ambitious. Victor and Walton dream of transforming society and of bringing glory to themselves through their scientific achievements. However, their actions are deeply flawed and bring misfortune for all..
6. revenge
   After it is abandoned and mistreated, the monster turns to revenge.
7. Nature
   In Frankenstein crises and suffering result when imperfect men disturb nature's perfection. In the end, Victor is destroyed for his evil attempt to manipulate the power of nature.

Work cited:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley
https://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/literature-frankenstein-themes.php