Criticism In The Rude Awakening By Mary Shelley

The Rude Awakening It all started in the summer of 1816; Mary Shelley an inspiring writer spent her summer in Geneva with her husband Percy along with other writers Lord Byron and Polidori. The summer was rainy and wet causing a confinement indoors for many days. The time they spent indoors left them to entertain their imagination. They shared and read old ghost stories, until Byron suggested that they “each write a ghost story” of their own (Shelley 22). Shelley contemplated on how to find her story. She challenged herself to create a tale that would “curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart” (23). She provokes her mind to vividly interpret her own darkness in which influences the development of a story she calls Frankenstein.

The rebellion from the father’s wishes portrays Shelley’s own rebellion to step out of her father’s reins so she can delve into her poetic attributes with her lover. She explains her character Victor begins to become enwrapped in his independence, much like her own interests, her character Victor’s thirst of this unorthodox knowledge consumes him, and he becomes quickly addicted to his work. He works frivolously learning all that he can, with the intent of the possibility that he could “banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death (Shelley 47)!” At this point Shelley exhibits Victor has not really emotionally dealt with the grief of losing his mother. As he detours any social concessions, communication with his family, and retracts to isolation, Victor inclines to trigger an emotional mental collapse. Evidence for this can be found in an article called “The Use of Psychodrama in Dealing With Grief and Addiction-Related Loss and Trauma”, the author Tian Dayton offers tendencies of addicts claiming that they “Are themselves hurt people, who have relied on some form of self-medication to manage their emotional pain (Dayton 15).” In this case Victor has relied upon his studies, to self-medicate and put aside the impending grieving process. In Shelley’s

He continues until one night his constructed creature is successfully reanimated with life. In that moment, one would think Victor’s reaction to be a celebration, a glorified moment of success of the birth of a long vested effort. Rather, Victor on the contrary seems to wake up from the long trance of the taboo that seduced him. In full consciousness, he is horrified by the reality of his creation and he runs away to his bedroom to hide (Shelley 60). The creature much like an innocent newborn child is not welcomed by warm awaiting parents, but rather a cold abandonment. Mary Shelley reflects in her introduction of Frankenstein, how she, "Then a young girl, came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea (Shelley 19)." In reality her first novel releases her own inner fears, fantasies and anxieties in this twisted tale of grief, loneliness, rejection and abandonment. Shelley relives her abandonment of her father through Victor Frankenstein’s cold abandonment to his creature. Janet Horwitz Murray offers deeper insight of Shelley’s Frankenstein in her article named “My Monster, Myself,” stating that Shelley herself was the