William Godwin Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft GodwinBirth - 30 August 1797 - in Somers

Town, London,

In 1814 she meets the married Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Travels throught Europe.

Married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London.

She gave birth to four children.

In 1816 she writes Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus.

Death - 1 February 1851

Mary Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mary Shelley Novels

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Autobiographical, Mathilda (1820)

The historical novels Valperga (1823)

Perkin Warbeck (1830).

The apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837).

Studies of her lesser-known works such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46)

In the summer of 1816, she and Percy Shelley were living near the poet Lord Byron and his doctor-friend John Polidori on Lake Geneva in the Swiss Alps. During a period ofincessant rain, the four of them were reading ghost stories to each other when Byron proposed that they each try to write one. For days Shelley could not think of an idea.

I busied myself to think of a story, . . . Onewhich would speak to the mysterious fears ofour nature and awaken thrilling horror.—Mary Shelley

“Many and long were the

conversations between Lord Byron and

Shelley, (…). During one of these

various philosophical doctrines were

discussed, and among others the

nature of the principle of life, and

whether there was any probability of

its ever being discovered and

communicated. (…) Perhaps a corpse

would be reanimated; galvanism had

given token of such things: perhaps

the components parts of a creature

might be manufactured, brought

together, and endued with vital

warmth.”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, preface

Galvanism

In the 1780s, Luigi Galvani, a professor ofanatomy in Bologna, Italy, conducted experiments on animal tissue using a machine that could produce electrical sparks. He concluded that animal tissue contained electricity in the form of a fluid. Galvani’s theory of “animal electricity”was shown to be incorrect, but he had proven that muscles contracted in response to an electrical stimulus.

A Gothic Novel

Frankenstein is generally categorized as a Gothic novel, a genre of fiction that uses gloomy settings and

supernatural events to create and atmosphere of mystery and terror.

Shelley adds to her development of the plot the use of psychological realism, delving into the psyches of the characters in and attempt to explain why they

react as they do and what drives them to make their decisions.

Structure and Point of View

The novel takes place in the late 1700s in various parts of Europe, especially Switzerland and Germany, and in the Arctic. Walton´s letters to his sister

Frankenstein´s story to Walton

The Creature´s story to Frankenstein

Major Characters

Victor Frankenstein

The Creature

Henry Clerval

Robert Walton

Elizabeth