English Literature ATAR : Year 12 - Frankenstein: Home

Mary Shelley conceived her creature at the height of the literary and philosophical period called Romanticism. The forces that marked this period were the many changes that were being carried out, such as political (French and American revolutions), economic (from rural to urban economy and the beginnings of the industrial revolution), scientific (discoveries in medicine, neurology, electricity, and chemistry), and social (growing importance of education of the masses).

Understanding Frankenstein's historical context is essential when it comes to grasping the meaning behind the work. Frankenstein's time period was one of significant social change; thematically, the novel is very much about the transition from Enlightenment thinking to Romantic thinking that was going on in Europe at the time.

Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that flourished in Britain and countries around Europe from the late-18th century, with a huge impact on society and culture. Expressing themselves through novels and poems, paintings and music, architecture and philosophy, the Romantics emphasised passionate emotions over cold, hard reason;... There were many Romantic artists, writers and thinkers, there were “the big six”, as Professor Hay puts it, across two broad groups in Britain. They were the William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake. With around a 10- to 15-year gap, the next generation was headed by Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron.

‍Contents
1. Summary
2. Historical Contexts and Setting
3. Themes
4. Feminist Interpretation
5. Sample Essay Topics
6. Essay Topic Breakdown

The global reach of the setting also suggests one way in which Frankenstein can be read allegorically. Shelley’s era saw a rapid expansion of European power across the globe, driven by the same advances in science that enable Frankenstein to create the Monster.

Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a timeless classic that has captivated readers for centuries. In this article, we will delve into the background, history, and creation of this iconic work of literature.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley began writing “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” when she was eighteen years old.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in 1797 to two exceptional writers. Her father, William Godwin, was an acclaimed journalist and political philosopher. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the author of the radical book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, among other celebrated works...

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, issues of gender identity are explored through the creation of an unnatural monster set in an otherwise idyllic society. With its central characters that exemplify the idealized gender roles of the time, the creation of Frankenstein’s monster poses critical questions dealing with the social make-up of nineteenth-century British society.

Victorian women’s representations are reflected in literature by some authors during the period. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) may be accepted as examples for the reflections of women’s representations in Victorian society to English literature....

The novel also draws a lot of influence from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. According to the introduction of our text, Shelley alludes to the epic poem since it is a work that portrays creation, in this case the creation of Man and Man’s downward spiral (Fall of Man) due to his disobedience towards God.
Additionally, the subtitle of the novel is The Modern Prometheus. Milton’s epic also deals with the Promethean theme of a character or a creature who inhibits “forbidden knowledge”.
Without being explicit, Shelley references Milton’s messages and his themes from Paradise Lost into Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein is conventionally accused of playing God, that is of usurping the role properly reserved to a divine being of creating life and in doing so, of creating a life that wreaks murderous revenge on its creator. Yet the charge of ‘playing God’ is more rhetoric than serious criticism.

Whenever your ears pick up alarming words such as hubris, or playing god, or Frankenstein, you know that the myth of Prometheus is being signaled. When “the masters of science sought immortality and power,” warned Mary Shelley, an uncontrollably violent monster was threatening.Footnote2 Today’s Prometheus wears a white lab coat, sometimes experiments with living creatures, and plans for the future (pro-mathein means to think ahead).

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley draws on the traditions of Locke and Rousseau, depicting evil as primarily the result of corruption by society.

Galvani provided the major stimulus for Volta to discover a source of constant current electricity; this was the voltaic pile, or a battery, with its principles of operation combined from chemistry and physics. This discovery led to the subsequent age of electric power.

In Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein alludes to lightning and Galvanism as the basis for resurrecting a lifeless cadaver. Although Volta’s ideas had supplanted Galvani’s theory of animal electricity within the scientific community, the notion of electricity and reanimation still lingered in the air when Mary Shelley penned her novel. Mary Shelley herself mentioned philosophical discussions between her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron in 1816 on Luigi Galvani’s experiments and how Galvanism suggested the possibility of reanimating the dead. These discussions stimulated her to explore, in fiction, the moral and personal responsibilities and the dilemmas of scientific advance.

The Arctic serves several important roles in the story of Frankenstein:
Framing Device; Symbolism of the Frozen Wastes; Foreshadowing; Moral Warning; Parallel Journeys

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, which first gave life to “the monster,” now an icon in his own right. The story can perhaps credit some of its long-lived popularity to the fact that it intersects with many fields of study: literature, biology, ethics, sociology, media studies and … earth science?

Notwithstanding Mary Shelley's own literary talent, and her night of inspiration in 1816, we might now give some credit to the time spent six years previously by her husband-to-be in the study of a retired Scots physician in Windsor.

Frankenstein is, of course, a work of fiction, but a good deal of real-life science informed Shelley's masterpiece, beginning with the adventure story that frames Victor Frankenstein's tale: that of Captain Walton's voyage to the Arctic.