1、Portrait of Mary Shelley Mary Shelley,the author of the legendary Frankenstein,was no commonplace nineteen-year-old teenager.In a matter of way,she was a literary novice in her own respect,right from childhood.Being the daughter to the thinker,novelist and publisher William Godwin and feminist Mary
2、Wollstonecraft,she basked amongst literary elite right from her early days.Whilst girls of her age attended to ball frocks and hair-dos she was more occupied with contemporary Gothic novels;Paradise Lost by Milton,Paradise Regained,Areopagetica,Lycidas and Comus.On the other end,Shelly digested the
3、works of her poet-husband Pryce Shelley,Byron,Wordsworth,and Coleridge and while writing down the notorious Frankenstein,she was going through Gullivers Travels by Swift.To some degree,Frankenstein was more of a girls wonder that owed to childhood feasts on dark and peculiar fantasies.How was Franke
4、nstein Born It started one stormy night at the residence of Lord Byron where a group of contemporary literati were assembled.Mary Shelly was also visiting,accompanied by her future husband Percy Shelley.To pass the stormy days and nights,they decided they would have a competition to see who could wr
5、ite the best horror story.It was one such night,Mary Shelly saw her monsters first silhouette in dream.Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what she had made.Then Frankenstein was written.PS:Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelleys loss of a baby was
6、a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein.TheinfluenceofherparentsMary Shelley(1797-1851)was destined to become one of the most prominent figures in English literature.Both her parents were revolutionaries and writers:Her father William Godwin(1756-1836)was an English journalist and novelis
7、t and one of the major proponents of anarchist philosophy.Marys mother Mary Wollstonecraft(1759-1797),one of the earliest feminists,was equally radical.In her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women Wollstonecaft argues that the inferior role of women in society was not natural,but rather a conseq
8、uence of miseducation.She called for equality of women and men,the womens right to work and proper education for girls.Although she died ten days after giving birth to her daughter Mary,her works continued to influence Mary Shelley.Mary grew up surrounded by intellectual minds and she was educated a
9、nd tutored by her father,who married his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801.Percy Shelley,a poet and radical free-thinker,fell in love with Mary,despite being still married to his first wife Harriet.Mary and Percy both shared a love for literature and they used to discuss literary classics and
10、philosophy.The story is partially based on Giovanni Aldinis electrical experiments on dead and(sometimes)living animals and was also a warning against the expansion of modern humans in the Industrial Revolution,alluded to in its subtitle,The Modern Prometheus.It has had a considerable influence acro
11、ss literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films.Latent reasons behind Mary Shelleys account of Frankenstein included the death of her first child,Willy,whom she had thoughts about,restoring to life.Additionally,hers was an era of scientific exploration and
12、biological experimentation.Galvanism was regarded as a way to call upon life in corpses through electrification,leading to mythical qualities.Also,there had been successive deaths in her family shaping her infant brain to see the traumatic side of life and escapism.The dream,in the after math of Lor
13、d Byrons challenge coupled with Mary Shelleys contemporary and domestic situation lead her to write the story of Frankenstein monster,a creature cursed by his own plight.lGuilt&Anxieties lFeminist lThe worry for science and technologylThe romantic promethean lLacking faith in Godwins theory To some
14、degree,the book shows Shelleys guilt for causing her mothers death as well as for failing as a parent.Shelley scholar Anne K.Mellor suggests that,from a feminist viewpoint,it is a story about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman.Frankenstein is profoundly concerned with natur
15、al as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction.Victor Frankensteins failure as a parent in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy,giving birth,and particularly maternity.Frankensteins act of creation is not only a sin against God/nature.I
16、t is also an act against the female principle,which includes natural procreation as one of its central aspects.The Monster,the result of male arrogance,is the enemy and destroyer of the eternal female principle.The Monster is the child of an unnatural act of procreation in which woman has become unn
17、ecessary.The male,who is the executive power in a patriarchal system,has deprived woman of her most natural function because he is now able to create children without female participation.The present discussion about genetic engineering and human cloning shows that this is not a far-fetched utopia.M
18、ary Shelley seems not to condemn the act of creation but rather Frankensteins lack of willingness to accept the responsibility for his deeds.His creation only becomes a monster at the moment his creator deserts it.Thus Frankenstein warns of the careless use of science-the book was written at an earl
19、y stage of the Industrial Revolution,a period of dramatic scientific and technological advance.This is still an important issue,even 200 years after the book was written.Taken into consideration what many inventions of the last 50 years brought upon mankind,one must assume that many scientists still
20、 do not care much.(E.g.the splitting of the atom was turned into nuclear bombs and the invention of the computer resulted in an eerie dehumanisation of our society).The mythological Prometheus rebelled against the Gods when he gave fire to humankind;Frankenstein is a rebel against nature when he tri
21、es not only to find the secret of life but also to remove lifes defects.But even more so,in Victor Frankenstein both aspects of the Prometheus myth are embodied:the transgressive(hubris/rebellion against authority)and the creative(Prometheus also molded mankind from pieces of clay).Therefore Franken
22、stein is truly a drama of the romantic promethean hero who fails in his attempt to help mankind.The creature in Frankenstein,for example,reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless.Shelleys works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft;she lacks faith in Godwins theory that humanity could eventually be perfected.谢谢观看！2020
