Frankenstein: An Author's Tragedy

             From the very start of Mary Shelley's life, her experiences influenced the writing of her 1831 novel, Frankenstein. The book is born from a young woman's maternal anxieties (Mellor 50). These feelings presumably originated from the death of her mother during childbirth. This and other tragedies of Mary's life are continually portrayed through her most famous work, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.
             One of the most difficult aspects of Mary Shelley's life is the frequent death that seems to follow her. The main character Victor Frankenstein is faced with the loss of his younger brother, William, the accused, Justine Moritz, his best friend, Henry Clerval, and his wife, Elizabeth Lavenza. Like Victor, Mary loses her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, her first daughter, her half-sister, Fanny Imlay Godwin, her daughter, Clara, and her son, William. She is also fascinated with graveyards, specifically the site of her mother's grave at Saint Pancras Churchyard, "where she read her mother's works and sought solace from nature and her mother's spirit" (Mellor 20). In the novel, Victor spent a lot of his time in graveyards conducting research, "I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses" (Shelley 36-37). Her difficult family life is also expressed through the words of her novel. With the absence of her real mother, Mary could turn only to her malicious stepmother for motherly affection. She opened and read her mail and insisted that Mary perform household chores. She also discouraged her passion for reading and denied her formal education (Mellor 8).
             William Godwin, Mary's father, "had deliberately distanced himself from his daughter" and felt that she "disrupted domestic harmony in the Godwin household" (Mellor 13). Despite Mary's admiration for her father, he sent her to live with William Baxter in Scotland (Mellor 15). Like the hideous creature i...

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Frankenstein: An Author's Tragedy. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 19:03, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/98359.html