Frankenstein Essay Research Paper Mary Shelley had

Frankenstein Essay, Research Paper

Mary Shelley had a dark childhood and a abnormal life. This

had a large influence on how she wrote Frankenstein. In

Frankenstein, her personal life played a significant roll on the

gothic appeal of the book. The people that influenced her book

the most was her father, William Godwin, her Mother, Mary

Wollstonecraft Godwin, Her Husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley and her

little brother William Godwin.

Mary Shelley s father William Godwin was a philosopher and a

political theorist. Her father was a great writer but he was not

there when Mary needed him and he didn t give Mary the attention

that she needed. He was not a bad father he was just not there to

raise her and watched after her, he still managed to earn her

love though. This would help to explain why Mary was a great

author, but wrote about dark and dominated things in

Frankenstein. Despite her resentment of her father s bleak

rationality, she acknowledged her deep intellectual debts to his

novels by dedicating Frankenstein to him (Davenport 191). Her

father also wrote dark stories of misery. Mary saw as did her

father, the duality in human nature which is capable of brining

misery and ruin to the most gifted of beings. (Bloom78).

After the death of his wife and Mary s mother he married

Mary Jane Clairmont. Mary was a very bad stepmother. She did not

give Mary any of the attention or love that she needed from a

mother. It only got worse when Mary Jane gave birth to her first

child. Now that Mary Jane had a child of her own she did not give

any attention to Mary. Mary Jane would go on to have four more

children. The five children crowded into one house increased

Mary s feeling of inner isolation, the refrain which sounds

throughout her novels and short stories. Another constant

refrain, that of complex familiar relationships, is seen embodied

in the five children, no one of whom could muster two parents in

common, Charles and Jane Excepted (Harold78)

The death of her mother was probably the biggest factor that

affected the writing of Frankenstein. One theme of Frankenstein

is mothering and the absence of mothers: Mary Shelley s own

mother was heavily pregnant with her when her parents married :

her mother died as a result of her birth. (Gothic 188). This is

where Mary conceived the idea of the Frankenstein Impulse -

The desire to alter human nature even to the point of creating

life itself. (Sunstein 233) A quote that best represents the

relationship between her mother and the creation of the monster

is Victor

dreams seeing pictures of his dead mother ten he wakes up and

sees the dead monster. (Frankenstien43) This quote describes the

relationship between Mary Shelly s mother and the creation,

because Mary had been born into the world motherless, like the

creature and throughout her life she had only had a father to

guide her, like the monster does. The creature is a symbol for

Mary being born into the world as a motherless child. Her

reserved manner hid deep feelings baffled by her mother s death

and her father s distance- two kinds of coldness, one might say,

both of them which are embodied in the monster s dead and also

unloved. (Bloom78)

Mary s Mother also a had a very big influence on giving Mary

the courage to write a book in a society that was ruled and

dominated by men. It was almost unheard for a women to write a

book especially one that is as morbid as Frankenstein. Mary s

mother was a brilliant women who wrote the world s first feminist

tract, A Vindication of the rights of women. Mary got many of her

dark personality traits from her mother. When Mary s mother had a

failed love, before Mary was born, she tried to jump off of a

bridge and commit suicide, luckily though she failed at her

attempt.

In her late teen years Mary got involved with a married with

a married man who was a great writer also. She did not marry him

until his wife died. She was so desperate for love that she

followed him all around Europe. He would help Mary to spark many

ideas, when he was living and when he died. The

Shelley-Frankenstein connection had been a frequent source of

speculation among the novel s critics… the novel is an

instrument of revenge against her husband. (Bloom)

Marilyn butler has demonstrated that Mary and her husband were

keenly interested in a contemporary medical controversy as to

whether electricity or something analogous to it, could do duty

for the soul and this inspired the means for Frankenstein to be

infuse the vital spark of life into the monstrous

creation. (Gothic 192)

These are both quotes that represent how her husband

influenced her in a negative a positive way. Her husband helped

to give her ideas to write th

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