Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

FRANKENSTEIN

‘Frankenstein is full of ideas and warnings which are relevant to a

modern audience.’

-Discuss the enduring appeal of the novel.

Introduction:

Despite being over a century old, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has

continued to hold public interest for nearly two hundred years. The

novel was published 1818 and is one of the most acclaimed gothic

stories in the history of literature. It has remained a firm favourite

with audiences of the past and present, and has been adapted and

re-told many times through various different kinds of media, for

example; radio programmes, theatre, art, children’s comic books and

cartoons, television and film versions.

Shelley, daughter of one of the first feminist thinkers of the age,

Mary Wollstonecraft, came from a well educated background, of the

artistic and intellectual elite of the time. However, she grew up in

most unusual circumstances; her parents never married (which was

frowned upon) and she herself went on to have children (out of

wedlock) with the famous English poet Percy Shelley.

The idea for Frankenstein developed when Lord Byron, Shelley, Mary

came together in the summer of 1816 in Geneva. On a fateful day, they

were confined indoors due to rain. Byron came up with the idea that

each of them should write a ghost story to pass time. It is thought

she took many ideas from Percy Shelley's ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and most

of Frankenstein became based on the limitations of being a human

being.

Mary Shelley alone succeeded in creating a story that would later

become one of the most famous of all time. In the preface t...

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...ssue in Frankenstein relates to modern

times. There are growing numbers of children from single parent

backgrounds where, for certain reasons, they have been abandoned by

one or both of their parents. In today’s society, it is more commonly

the case of fathers abandoning their children very young. There is a

significant pattern between the numbers of children who are raised

without one or both of their parents and the numbers of children who

turn to crime. The tale of Frankenstein’s monster relates to this in

the same way: he was left to raise himself, having been abandoned by

Frankenstein, and murdered several people throughout the story, having

not been taught right from wrong. Had Frankenstein been there for the

monster and not rejected him from the very beginning, things may not

have turned out in the way they did.