Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
August 30, 1797-February 1, 1851Parents:
Mary Wollstonecraft the famous feminist author (probably the first feminist author)
William Godwin A famous philosopher and novelist
Parents were thinkers, movers, and shakers.
She was surrounded by all the greatest minds of her time.
• Her mother died when she was very small and she was impressed upon to take her mother’s place in the world.
• At age 16 she ran away with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poet, who was already married.
• When she was 18 she wrote Frankenstein.
• Around that same time Shelley’s wife committed suicide and “reluctantly” Mary and Percy married.
• They moved to Italy to escape public scrutiny.
• Two of their three children died in Italy.
• When Mary was 24, Percy drowned. Mary never remarried, despite many offers. She said she wanted her last child to keep his father’s name.
The Romantic MovementThe late 1700s to roughly three
decades into the nineteenth century. Characterized by:
*Innovation (instead of traditionalism),
*Spontaneity
*The belief of living in an age of "new beginnings and high possibilities."
*Freedom of thought and expression (especially the thoughts and feelings of the poet himself)
*An idealization of nature (Romantic poets were also referred to as "nature poets")
*Protagonist is usually a solitary character who has an
egocentrical nature. *Regarded as the forerunner of the modern mystery or science fiction novel. *Written to evoke terror Also served to show the dark side of human nature.
They describe the "nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind."
*Surprising number of female Gothics
GOTHIC LITERATURE
The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering
lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest. By extension, it came to designate
the macabre, mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and, again, the terrifying, especially
the pleasurably terrifying.
The GothicsJane Austen-Northanger
Abbey,
Mary Shelley-Frankenstein
Bram Stoker—Dracula
Edgar Allen Poe—
Poetry and Novels
Science Fiction and Mary Shelley• Science fiction explores "the
marvels of discovery and achievement that may result from future developments in science and technology". Mary Shelley used some of the most recent technological findings of her time to create Frankenstein.
• She has replaced the heavenly fire of the Prometheus myth with the spark of newly discovered electricity. The concepts of electricity and warmth led to the discovery of the galvanization process, which was said to be the key to the animation of life. Indeed, it is this process which animates Frankenstein’s monster.
The Little Ice Age
If it weren’t for climate change—there would be no Frankenstein!
At the end of a glacial period known as The Little Ice Age Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin spent a summer in Switzerland at the home of fellow Romantic Lord Byron
It was 1816, the “Year without a Summer”The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 had caused a
long volcanic winter
The travelers spent most of their summer indoors and usually fell to talking. One subject they talked at length
about was Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather to Charles), who was said to have
animated dead matter, and to galvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or
assembled body parts to life.
One night they amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale.
Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary Godwin conceived the idea for Frankenstein:
Shelley’s Dream“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts
kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
She won the contest and With Percy Bysshe Shelley’s encouragement she expanded the story to an entire novel.
