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Summary Frankenstein- Mary Shelley, COMPLETE CONTEXT NOTES

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Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Institution
OCR

Book
Frankenstein

This document covers the necessary context notes for the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Within the OCR exam for the gothic comparison question, context is the heaviest weighting, this document entails how to receive those top band marks.

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Frankenstein By Mary Shelley- Context notes

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s early life:
- Her mother died giving birth to her which influenced her writing, there was no
female present at the birth of the creature- her fear about possibly carrying children.
- Shelley got pregnant very fast after eloping and gives birth to a premature girl who
dies very soon after. A dream that her baby came alive again played out in her head
for weeks- link to creature being ‘born’.
- One out of 5 of Shelley’s children actually survived through to adulthood. She
questions whether she would also want her children to die, Victor wanting to be rid of
his creation. She questioned whether her child would ever want to kill her- creature
wanting revenge on Victor for being abandoned.
- Mary’s mother died, her father re-married and she had a step sister from her mothers
previous lover, William Godwin hires a nanny, after a few years the nanny falls in
love with one of William’s disciples, marry is again left abandoned.
- Psychological illness thanks to Clairemont- her step mother, she comes out in boils
all over her body from the stress and anxiety of being around her- Victor/illness with
the monster.
- Man writes to Godwin, asking as a fan of his work if he can do anything for him,
Godwin asked him to take in Shelley, she went to Dundee, abandoned by her family,
her life story mirrors more of the monster than of victor- sympathy.
- Darwinism- the evolution, mutation. Whereas Victor just plays god and creates a
creature straight away- enlightenment vs romantic movement? Rejection of religion,
mother nature then attacks Victor.
- The science that victor is completing is cutting edge, brand new.
- Wants us to understand from her own early life, that when a mother is absent in a
family, the family becomes destructive.
- If ones study means that they are reducing themselves from human contact, the study
is not for them and is unlawful.

Historical context:
Social unrest:
- Written at a time of many great changes in British society and deals with a variety of
issues central to the development of industrious Britannia. In the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. This was a period of significant developments in science
and technology and, at least partly as a result of such advances, also a time of social
and political upheaval.
- Technological enhancements had a massive impact on people’s lives, endangering
traditional ways of living in much the same way as scientific developments
undermined by traditional beliefs.
- Industrial revolution- significant threat to livelihoods of many lower-class- machines
being used rather than people. The luddite disturbances in 1811-17- machines and
factories were destroyed, this revolution stirred uneasy memories of the French
Revolution.
- William Godwin, Shelley’s father, initially saw the French Revolution as the sign of
the start of a new era in history with the removal of corrupt institutions. Although its

, original aims were ok, the outcome was disastrous and violent. The execution of the
king, suggested a divide from god.
- Percy Shelley responded with a political pamphlet stating the country was torn
between anarchy and oppression, to the marching of 300 men to Nottingham,
Pentridge uprising.
- Mary Shelley has her radical sympathies and, through her depiction of monster, she
reveals an awareness of social injustice and passionate desire for a reformation. At
the same time she could not fully support the rebellion against the established order,
and, again through the monster, expresses fear of revolutionary violence that
injustice in society may possibly provoke.

Scientific developments and the principal of life:
- Emerges out of Shelley’s familiarity with and understanding the political debates and
discoveries of her time. During the late eighteenth century, traditional philosophical
and theological investigations into the meaning and origins of life. In 1771, Joseph
Priestley observed that mice placed in a bell jar depleted the air and led to
suffocation, while sprigs of mint refreshed the air and made the mice lively.
- Eight years later, Antoine Lavoisier interpreted Priestley’s data to provide the first
understanding of the processes of respiration. Many scientists, remained reluctant to
accept that human life was dependant on the vegetive world: the idea that life can
simply be maintained through materials challenges traditional beliefs about the soul
and humanities unique position within the world.
- In 1814- debate over ‘life principal’ has caused a rift in the sciences.
- Shelley, like Davy, distinguishes the master-scientist who seeks to interfere with and
control nature, to modify and change nature’s creations, from the scholar-scientist
who seeks only to understand.
- Erasmus Darwin, was an evolutionist, not a creationist, which is opposite to the
character of Victor in the novel, who wants to create life and change life through
chemical means and is not willing to wait for the slow processes of evolution.
Galvanism:
- Reference specific to this scientific discovery in her novel.
- In 1791, Luigi Galvani published Commentary on the effects of Electricity on
Muscular Motion, suggesting, like animal tissue, muscles contain a vital force, which
he named as ‘animal electricty’, later naming it ‘galvinism’.
- Galvani believed it was a different form of electricity that produced by such things as
lightning, that it was produced by the brain, conducted by the nerves, and produced
by muscular motion.
- Variety of experiments on human corpse.
- Giovanni Adini on the corpse of the murderer Thomas Forster after he was hung at
Newgate. Wires attached to stimulate his body through electric currents, which
stimulated his body, gave the appearance of re-imagination.
- Details discussed in press in newspapers, influenced Shelley’s Frankenstein.
- Drawing upon scientific research, Shelley provides a frighteningly believable
prediction of what the future might be like in a world where humans hold the secret.

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