Context

Question 1

Frankenstein was first published…

Answer 1

… in 1818 anonymously, with a preface written by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Question 2

differences in the introduction

Answer 2

Frankenstein was re-published in 1831 with Mary Shelley’s author’s introduction.
The changes made to the text were not just matters of style, as Shelley claims in this introduction. Changes included:
- an inner-life for Victor, portarying him in a slightly more sympathetic manner
- Elizabeth was no longer Victor’s first cousin and was presented as being more angelic

The changes may indicate the differences between the free-thinking nineteen-year-old of 1818 and the mature and conservative woman who revised the novel.

Question 3

William Godwin

Answer 3

Mary’s father. He openly condemned all human insitutions for being corrupt in his An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Question 4

Mary Wollstonecraft

Answer 4

Mary’s mother. She openly condemned false and excessive sensibility and argued for the rights of women to receive a proper and rational education in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Question 5

‘my hideous progeny’

Answer 5

this is what Shelley referred to her own book as in the introduction. Through this inclusion, she immediately introduces themes of parenting and nurturing.
Additionally, she creates an intrinsic link between her book and the monster within it; like the monster, the book is a narrative stitched together out of miscellanous, incongrous narrative voices and intertexual references to other texts, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Question 6

paratext

Answer 6

introductions, prefaces, epigraphs, dedications etc. are all part of a text’s paratext. this term refers to everything that frames a text.
the paratext can influence the reception and interpretation of a book. Shelley’s 1831 introdution facilitates one interpretation in particular: that Victor’s creation was a transgression against God.

Question 7

cult of domesticity

Answer 7

there was a growing idealisation of family life in the 18th/19th century. this ideal was based on the separation of workplace and home and the division between male and female activities. Women were associated with the private sphere, and men the public sphere.
We can see this split in Frankenstein, with the men working as public servants, scientists, merchants, or explorers, and the women remaining in the home as mothers, nurses or servants.

Question 8

quotation from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Answer 8

‘I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair’