Natalie Maio Romanticism
             PARALLELS BETWEEN MARY SHELLEY and FRANKENSTEIN
             It is clearly evident that there are many parallels between the novel Frankenstein and the life of its author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Throughout her life, Shelley experienced many deaths of loved ones. These tragedies led her to create a monster story that expressed her psychological state of mind. From researching biographical texts of Shelley, I learned that the deaths of loved ones that Mary Shelley experienced had a significant influence on the plot of Frankenstein.
             Mary Shelley was born into a family that contained notable writers, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. These two writers influenced Mary Shelley's decision to become a writer. One night as Shelley was going to sleep, she began thinking of a horror story. Before she realized it, pages and pages of words were flowing and soon enough, Frankenstein was created. Without realizing it, Shelley was incorporating events that were taking place in her life to the story that she was writing.
             Mary Wollstonecraft became very sick when Shelley was born. She had suffered due to complications during childbirth. Everything happened all at once and two weeks after she gave birth, Mary Wollstonecraft died. Mary Shelley was the cause of the death of her mother. Never would she be able to get close and bond with her mother the way mothers and daughters
             do. She realized that she had to stay strong and accept what life had to offer her. "Though she had struggled to reject that instinctive guilt, carefully schooled as she had been in logic throughout her thirteen years by her renowned philosopher father, the thought continued to haunt her" (Leighton 3). Thoughts of her mother would always be with her, but life had to go on. There was no better way for Shelley to keep the spirit of her mother alive then by following in her mother's footste...