The ability to read other people's minds.....to know their thoughts, their dreams, their every desire. To be able to delve into the deepest part of their subconscious and know what is going on in their heads --- this is probably one of the most common fantasies held by every human being. To understand someone else's motivations for doing things, and to somehow find the answer to the most prevalent question on earth...."Why?"
             To begin, that is the question that must be asked. Why did Mary Shelly write Frankenstein? What possessed a woman in the 1800's to come up with such a horrendous tale? Certainly, one of the reasons was to upstage Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in the game that they had begun, as Mary herself tells us, " I busied myself to think of a story, --- a story to rival those which had excited us to this task." But after reading the novel, one realizes that there must have been an underlying motive for Shelley to concoct such a disturbing and grotesque tale -- a tale, that during the conservative period in which she lived would almost certainly be regarded by critics as unworthy reading material -- not only because she was a woman, but also a woman who was able to create -- to imagine -- such a completely outlandish story. Shelley herself even believed in this feminist viewpoint, for Dr. Smith states, " ....her general reflections on women as 'weaker' than men and lacking in their 'higher grades of intellect....'" Therefore it is surprising that she even undertook the task of writing the novel, but write she did.
             To try and determine the basis for Shelley's idea of Frankenstein would probably be most easily done if we went back to examine her childhood. Shelley's mother died when Mary was only a newborn, and her father quickly married another woman to fill the void. Mary, however, could not relate to her "Wicked Stepmother," and instead
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