'Frankenstein' Context

Question 1

Which revolutions were spreading across Europe?

Answer 1

America Revolution, Haitian Revolution, and the French Revolution (most influentially).

Question 2

How did the revolutions spreading across Europe influence this novel?

Answer 2

The revolutions happened due to a need for social change and to challenge oppressive hierarchies. This reflects core themes and ideas in the novel; the Creature challenges oppressive hierarchies, yet many characters fall victim to them.

Question 3

Who wrote the poem ‘Angel in the House’?

Answer 3

Coventry Patmore.

Question 4

What is the ‘Angel in the House’ archetype?

Answer 4

An idealised view of women as outlined by Coventry Patmore in his poem of the same name.
Women are to be loving, submissive, silent and obedient.

Question 5

What book did Mary Wollstonecraft write?

Answer 5

‘Vindication for the Rights of Women’, a proto-feminist exposé on gender inequalities coded into society.

Question 6

Who was William Godwin?

Answer 6

Shelley’s father, a radical and proto-anarchist.

Question 7

What book did William Godwin write?

Answer 7

‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’, which outlined that mankind is capable of perfection through reason and eventually there will be no need for the corrupting institutions such as the state.
In part, it is responding to the French Revolution and also Rousseau’s philosophies.

Question 8

How did William Godwin’s book, ‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’, influence Shelley’s novel?

Answer 8

The book claimed that ordered society oppressed the mind from thinking freely and relegated communities into controllable circles.
This can be seen in the female characters, who accept society’s treatment of them.
However, as the Creature exists outside of society, he is aware of their prejudices (physiognomy).

Question 9

Who noticed that they could use a spark to make dead frog legs move?

Answer 9

Luigi and Luigi Galvani (1780).

Question 10

What did Luigi and Lucia Galvini discover?

Answer 10

They could use a spark to make dead frog legs move (1780).

Question 11

How did the discovery of Luigi and Lucia Galvini, and Giovani Aldini’s experiment influence ‘Frankenstein’?

Answer 11

Influenced Shelley in how Victor brought the Creature to life.
She creates an alternate reality where their experiments works as a warning to scientific overreaching and ‘playing God’.

Question 12

Who attempted to reanimate hanged prisoner Thomas Forster using galvanism?

Answer 12

Giovani Aldini (1803).

Question 13

What did Giovani Aldini try to do?

Answer 13

Reanimate hanged prisoner Thomas Forster using galvanism (1803).

Question 14

What was the ‘life-principle’ debate’?

Answer 14

Argument between those who argued life was simply a physical process and those who argued for the existence of an immortal soul.

Question 15

How did the ‘life-principle’ debate influence Shelley’s novel?

Question 16

Who were materialists?

Answer 16

One side of the life-principle debate: those who argued that life was simply a physical process.

Question 17

Who were vitalists?

Answer 17

One side of the life-principle debate: those who argued for the existence of an immortal soul (like John Abernathy, President of the Royal College of Surgeons).

Question 18

What was Humphey Davy’s pamphlet called?

Answer 18

‘A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lecture on Chemistry’ (1802).

Question 19

What did Humphey Davy outline in his pamphlet (‘A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lecture on Chemistry’)?

Answer 19

Chemistry may provide the answer to the secret of life.
It is important for scientists to maintain their respect and reverence in their approach to nature, and to use knowledge carefully and responsibly, not for personal glorification, but for its wider benefits.

Question 20

What was the Romantic movement concerned with?

Answer 20

Sublimity of nature.
Individual legacy.
The corruption of innocence.
The significance of emotions over scientific rationality.

Question 21

What was the impact of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution?

Answer 21

Intellect and cultural shifts where all members of society were becoming more socially and politically conscious of individual rights and liberties.

Question 22

What was Shelley’s experience of pregnancy and motherhood?

Answer 22

She was pregnant while writing the novel and had already suffered the birth and death of an infant. Shelley’s mother had also died in childbirth.

Question 23

How do Shelley’s anxieties around maternity and birth manifest in the text?

Answer 23

The abnormal, unnatural birth of the Creature and Victor disrupting the female-coded role of ‘birther’.

Question 24

What are key conventions of the Gothic genre?

Answer 24

Mirrors/windows/reflection imagery used to reveal identities.
Gothic doubling.
The uncanny.

Question 25

What are the books the Creature acquires?

Answer 25

Volney’s ‘Ruins of Empires’.
Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’.
“Plutarch’s Lives” (from ‘Parallel Lives’).
Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Werther’.

Question 26

What happens in Volney’s ‘Ruins of Empires’?

Answer 26

The novel condemns the corruption of the church and discuses wealth, rank and poverty. It suggests that mankind, itself, is corrupt.

Question 27

How does Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ impact Shelley’s novel?

Answer 27

This text was most influential to the Creature, as he learns of the imbalance and destructive relationships they have.

Question 27

How does Volney’s ‘Ruins of Empires’ influence Shelley’s novel?

Answer 27

As it was a powerful force in English radicalism, Shelley was influenced by it.
Through it, the Creature learns humanity and institutions are corrupt (this is confirmed by the treatment he has received).
At once, this makes him both a danger to humanity, and also an enlightened being.

Question 28

What happens in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’?

Answer 28

This text describes the Creation, the fall of Lucifer, Eden and Adam and Eve, and the expulsion from Eden.

Question 29

What happens in “Plutarch’s Lives”?

Answer 29

It comprises of biographies of eminent Greeks and Romans. It also illuminates the moral failings in its depictions of greatness and heroism.

Question 30

How does “Plutarch’s Lives” influence the Creature?

Answer 30

He learns some men can be good and virtuous, and some men are evil.

Question 31

What happens in Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Werther’?

Answer 31

It involved the tragic story of failed love culminating in the protagonist’s suicide. This ‘failed love’ was a romantic infatuation with a married women – essentially, unrequited love.

Question 32

How does Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Werther’ influence Frankenstein?

Answer 32

This shows the value that humans place on love and leads to the revelation that the creature can end his life. It’s also significant that the book deals with very taboo themes, which would have appealed to the Creature as a product of transgression, himself.

Question 33

How does Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ influence the Creature?

Answer 33

He uses it to create a sense of identity.

Question 34

Who coined the phrase ‘tabula rasa’?

Answer 34

John Locke.

Question 35

What is John Locke’s theory of ‘tabula rasa’?

Answer 35

The mind at birth is like a blank sheet of paper (tabula rasa), filled later through experience.

Question 36

Who believes in ‘nurture’ rather than ‘nature’?

Answer 36

John Locke.

Question 37

What did Calvinists believe?

Answer 37

People are pre-programmed to be either good or evil, and pre-destined for either Heaven or Hell.

Question 38

Who believes in ‘nature’ rather than ‘nurture’?

Answer 38

Calvinists.

Question 39

What does Rousseau suggest in his book ‘Émile’?

Answer 39

A boy is raised in the countryside (healthier and more natural), under the guardianship of a tutor who will guide him through various learning experiences.

Question 40

How does Rousseau’s ‘Émile’ influence this novel?

Answer 40

The Creature does not have the guardian figure described to guide him through life. Through this, Shelley outlines Victors failure and how his moral education is stunted.

Question 41

Which Enlightenment philosopher said that “no man will be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last Priest”?

Answer 41

Diderot.

Question 42

What did Enlightenment philosopher Diderot say?

Answer 42

“No man will be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last Priest.”

Question 43

How does Diderot influence the novel?

Answer 43

His disapproving views of institutions/structures of power is reflected in how institutions treat characters in the novel.

Question 44

How does James D. Wilson characterise a Romantic hero?

Answer 44

An individual who triumphs over the “restraints of theological and social conventions”.

Question 45

Who characterises a Romantic hero as an individual who triumphs over the “restraints of theological and social conventions”?

Answer 45

James D. Wilson.