Frankenstein: Context

Question 1

Mary Wollstonecraft

Answer 1

• mother of Mary Shelley
• ‘A vindication of a woman’s rights’
• advocate for female rights

Question 2

French revolution

Answer 2

• politicisation of lower classes
• circling Jacobin novels
• the Enlightenment
• inspiration to writers: many used monster to demonise revolution, others used as a metaphor as feudalism etc.

Question 3

Growing interest of science

Answer 3

• Georgian/Victorian period - growing interest in science and alchemy
• excitement of the taboo and the illicit

Question 4

infant mortality

Answer 4

• high infant mortality rate

- usurping nurturing mother role

Question 5

Charles Darwin

Answer 5

Theory of Evolution 1859
- led to many anxieties:
link between humans and animals - suggestion that humans could be savage and primitive

Question 6

Literary - Marxist perspective

monster = working class

Answer 6

monster = working class

- birth will mark him for life even though his education is the same

Question 7

When was it written?

Answer 7

1818 - Georgian society

• published anonymously
• many questioned how much of Frankenstein was her own work and how much was her lover’s
• mid-1800s Emily Bronte also published Wuthering Heights under male pseudonym Ellis Bell

Question 8

Structuralist perspective - Walton’s role

Answer 8

• Walton’s narrative at beginning of novel = reader’s perspective
• Frankenstein’s story is a warning to Walton and thus to readers

Question 9

concept of evil

Answer 9

until now a largely religious one, became secularised by modern anthropology and psychology - now evil is not an external force but something within

Question 10

Shelley’s parents

Answer 10

• both radical writers
  mother a feminist
  father placed great emphasis on the value of education - Shelley was unusually well educated for a woman

Question 11

doubling

Answer 11

‘double was a manifestation of the evil within a character’

Question 12

Shelley’s father, Godwin

Answer 12

proposed a philosophy of “perfectibility” - humans should strive to find a way to live without sexuality or mortality
- Shelley dedicated novel to him

Question 13

physical deformity + criminality

Answer 13

physical deformity linked pseudo-scientific studies to criminality. Physiognomy suggested a character’s morality could be read in the shape of their skull and facial features

Question 14

‘suspended animation’

Answer 14

interest in states of ‘suspended animation’ - fainting, coma, sleeping, etc. Mary Shelley follows contemporary scientific language when describing episodes of fainting in novel

Question 15

‘Murder Act’ 1752

Answer 15

1752

punishment of dissection to hanging - enabled scientists to use bodies of executed criminals in experiments

Question 16

Prometheus

Answer 16

• key influence on Romantic writers
• Byron wrote a poem called Prometheus 1816
• Percy Shelley wrote a play Prometheus Unbound 1818
• wrote sympathetically of the character who sought to give knowledge away to the people from the Gods
• considered him a revolutionary and a ‘freedom fighter’

Question 17

Shelley’s children

Answer 17

daughter died only few days after birth

- later said, saw baby in a dream and when she warmed it by the fire it came back to life

Question 18

Luigi Galvani

Answer 18

Galvani passed an electric current through dead frog’s legs

Question 19

Romanticism

Answer 19

• reaction to Industrial revolution
• against belief that rationalism was more important than anything else
• looked for radical, adventurous, imaginative new ways of thinking
• valued intense emotions , nature = inspirational