Mary Shelly & Frankenstein’s themes

                      

Born in August 30, 1797, in London, England, Mary Shelley came from a rich literary heritage. She was the daughter of William Godwin, a political theorist, novelist, and publisher who introduced her to eminent intellectuals and encouraged her youthful efforts as a writer. One among them, Mary Wollstonecraft, a writer and early feminist thinker became very close with Mary.

In her childhood, Mary Shelley educated herself amongst her father's intellectual circle, which included critic William Hazlitt, essayist Charles Lamb and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Another prominent intellectual in Godwin's circle was poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary met Percy Shelley in 1812, when she was fifteen. Shelley was married at the time, but the two spent the summer of 1814 traveling together. A baby girl was born prematurely to the couple in February, 1815, and died twelve days later. In her journal of March 19, 1815, Mary recorded the following dream, a possible inspiration for Frankenstein: "Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived." Later a son, William, was born to the couple in January, 1816.

Mary and Percy Shelley were married December 30, 1816, just weeks after Shelley's first wife, Harriet, drowned. Mary gave birth to another daughter, Clara, in 1817, but she only lived for a year.

Following the death of 3-year-old William, Mary suffered a nervous breakdown. Of the Shelley’s' children, only one, Percy Florence, survived past childhood. Further tragedy struck Mary, when her husband Percy Shelley drowned during a heavy storm in the Gulf of Spezia near Livorna.

Mary, only 25 years old and a widow, returned to England with her son, determined not to marry again. She devoted herself to her son's welfare and education, and continued her career as a professional writer. Shelley gave up writing long fiction when realism started to gain popularity, exemplified by the works of Charles Dickens.

Mary Shelley lived in England until her death from a brain tumour in Bournemouth. She was 54 years old.

In the summer of 1816, Percy Shelley and 19-year-old Mary visited the poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Stormy weather frequently forced them indoors, where they and Byron's other guests sometimes read from a volume of ghost stories. One evening, Byron challenged his guests to write one themselves. Mary's story became Frankenstein later.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1818, when Mary was 21, and became a huge success. The first edition of the book had an unsigned preface by Percy Shelley. Many, disbelieving that a 19-year-old woman could have written such a horror story, thought that it was her husband’s novel.

Firstly, a short description of the novel Frankenstein: Victor Frankenstein experiences an idyllic childhood in Switzerland, surrounded by a loving family and accompanied by his adored cousin Elizabeth. After the death of his mother, his first unhappy experience, he attends University in Germany where he applies his new-found knowledge of science to manufacture a human being of enormous size and strength.

When his creation comes to life, Frankenstein is so horrified by his own bizarre accomplishment that he falls into a delirious illness which last months. Meanwhile, the creature flees into the woods and disappears.

Two years later, Frankenstein returns home upon learning that his brother has been mysteriously murdered. Justine, a friend of Frankenstein, is falsely convicted and executed.

Having been hated, rejected and feared by every human encountered, the creature considers all of humanity to be his enemy. He demands that Frankenstein create a female companion for him so that he will not be lonely, and promises that with his companion he will flee to a remote corner of South America and never come into contact with humans again.

Frankenstein cannot forgive the creature for the death of his brother and Justine; he refuses to build the female companion. In desperation and rage, the creature promises to make his creator as miserable as himself. In his vengeance, the creature murders Frankenstein's friends and family one by one, including his beloved cousin Elizabeth who he married.

When the creator and his creature are at last equally alone and family-less, Frankenstein seeks his own revenge and pursues his enemy into the Arctic northern wastes where together they meet their climatic fate. Another main character, Robert Walton is only seen in glimpses throughout the novel sending the letters to his sister about his experience. He's on this expedition with a ship because he wants to do new things and discover different places. He is far from friendly, complains of loneliness, wishes for a 'male' friend, many believe that he was homosexual, maybe that's one of the reasons he wants to be away from England (theme of gender and discrimination take place here). From the novel’s description one can clearly say that, the main theme revolving around the story was loneliness. All the three main characters suffer loneliness and they desire to be with someone. 

Emotional isolation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the most significant and prevailing theme throughout the entire novel. This theme of loneliness originates from Shelley's personal life and problems with her husband and father, which carry over into the novel and make it more realistic. During the time Shelley was writing Frankenstein, she was experiencing the emotional pangs of her new-born’s death and her half-sister's suicide. These events undoubtedly affected the novel's course and perhaps are a reflection of the person who was really lonely - Shelley herself. Referring her past personal experiences in the characters of Robert Walton, the Creature, and Victor Frankenstein, Shelley takes her readers on a tumultuous journey that shows how loneliness can end in catastrophe.

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Robert Walton is the first character introduced that is lonely.   “I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.”    Walton tries to mend his loneliness by writing letters to his sister, but it is just not enough.   Communicating by reading and writing letters is just not as good as communicating with a person to face. Another way Shelley created the feeling of loneliness is the setting.   No place on earth is more desolate and abandoned then the North Pole.   Walton’s loneliness indirectly fuels his passion to pursue the passage to the North Pole, no matter how many lives he must risk to do it.   The friendship that forms with Walton and Victor ultimately saves the lives of the crew and Walton himself.

There are also several other themes that seem to run through Shelley's Frankenstein. The most widely heralded theme is the idea that ignorance is bliss. In Shelley's time, the power of human reason, through science and technology, challenged many traditional precepts about the world and man's relationship with his creator. Yet at the same time, many questioned these humanist notions, stressing the limits of human capacity. Shelley details this theme in her book, making an allusion to the counter-humanist idea in chapters. Indeed, to Shelley and many others of her time, some riddles of nature should never be discovered by man. Even the alternate title, The Modern Prometheus, undeniably relates this point. Prometheus, a figure in Greek mythology, took fire from the gods in order to give it to man and consequently suffered eternal punishment. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein is this modern Prometheus-in a way, he stole the idea of creation from God and used it for his own ill-advised purposes.

A second theme stresses the idea of human injustice towards outsiders. Throughout his narrative, the monster laments over man's cruelty to those who are different. Indeed, Frankenstein's monster is an outcast-he doesn't belong in human society. Yet the monster's alienation from society, his unfulfilled desire for a companion with whom to share his life, and his on-going struggle for revenge, are all shared by his creator. As the story develops, Victor becomes increasingly like his creation. Both live in isolation from society, both hate their own miserable lives, and both know suffering. Shelley, through this theme, paints a very bleak portrait of man and his relationship with outsiders, as well as the cruel vengeance of society.

A third theme, directs society for its sexist viewpoints. Throughout his narrative, Victor portrays women as weak, suffering, subservient beings who live for and depend on the men in their lives. Surely Shelley experienced this in her own life, though she may or may not have agreed with it. Ironically, the monster-the one who Victor calls a barbarian-has a very progressive notion of the opposite sex. He believes that men and women are largely equal, not being brought up in Frankenstein's pre-feminist culture. The monster's desire for a female companion does not convey a desire to rule over a woman or a belief that a woman should be dependent on him, but it simply shows his need for an equal companion with whom to share his sufferings.