Francis Gilbert's Frankenstein Study Guide

NAXOS

jane eyre – a study guide by francis gilbert

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

YOUNG

Frankenstein
~ OR ~

A D U LT

The Modern
Prometheus

CLASSICS

A
S T U D Y
G U I D E by Francis Gilbert page 1

Contents introduction ............................................... 5 contexts ....................................................... 7
Understanding Contexts ...................................................
Contexts of Writing: Mary Shelley’s Life ........................
Selected Reading on Mary Shelley’s Life .........................
Contexts of Reading ..........................................................

7
8
12
12

structure and theme .................................. 15
The Influence
Coleridge, Holcroft, Lamb and Hazlitt were frequent visitors to the house. Mary met the poet Percy Shelley there twice. At their second meeting, two years after the first, when Mary was 17 , the attraction was immediate:
Mary was besotted by the poet’s incredible imagination and his radical sympathies, which were very similar to her father’s. He found Mary more intelligent and better read

than his wife, and was attracted by her family background as well as her pale good looks. They eloped to France in the summer of 1814 , spending the next years travelling around
Europe and England. During the next five years, Mary was to lose three children but give birth to a healthy son,
William, who was born on 24 January 1816 . These terrifying pregnancies were made all the more difficult to endure because her husband was convinced he had syphilis. He believed it was treated successfully by the surgeon William Lawrence, a close family friend, whose erudition and learning was to influence much of the scientific content of Frankenstein.
In the summer of 1816 , at Lord Byron’s villa at Cologny,
Switzerland, Shelley and Mary, and Byron and his
! discussion point
How are ‘quests’ for seemingly impossible goals viewed now by our culture?

! page 28

a study guide by francis gilbert

August 19, 17–
‘I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule;’ Frankenstein’s words to Walton are also Shelley’s words of justification to the reader. The novel contained much that was perceived to be shocking and sensationalist in its time.
Her introduction of Walton into the narrative affords her the chance to mould for the reader some sense of moral purpose in its telling. She also justifies her setting in the
Arctic by implying that the amazing sublime settings of nature stir feelings and thoughts that normally are suppressed in the human mind.
! discussion point
What are Shelley’s techniques of suspense in these first letters? What is her ultimate purpose in writing them?

From Chapter 1
My mother’s tender caresses and my father’s smile