The document provides background information on Mary Shelley and the origins of her novel Frankenstein. It summarizes that Shelley was born in 1797 to influential intellectual parents and received an education focused on literature and philosophy. As a teenager, she eloped with Percy Shelley. The document then gives an overview of the Gothic genre and explains how Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein during a vacation with Lord Byron where they told each other ghost stories. It also provides a brief summary of the novel's frame structure involving letters from Captain Walton.

1. FRANKENSTEIN
The Letters, Themes, What’s to Come

2. MARY SHELLY
Parents
• Born in 1797, Shelley was the daughter of two of England’s leading intellectual radicals.
• Her father was an influential political philosopher and novelist.
• Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was a pioneer in promoting women’s
rights and education.
Education
• Mary received no formal education, but Mr. Godwin encouraged his daughter to read from
his well-stocked library.
• The Godwin household was also a place of lively intellectual conversation.
• Many writers visited to talk about philosophy, politics, science, and literature.
Marriage
• Mary’s future husband, the widely admired poet Percy Shelley
• When Mary was sixteen, she and Percy eloped to France.
Author
• Mary Shelley did not put her name on the novel when it was published in 1818
• Many reviewers and readers assumed it was written by Percy Shelley because he had written the preface.

3. GOTHIC NOVELS
Frankenstein is an example of a gothic novel.
This type of novel was popular between 1760 and
1820. The main ingredients of the gothic novel
are mystery, horror, and the supernatural . The
word gothic itself has several meanings. It can
mean harsh or cruel, referring to the barbaric
Gothic tribes of the Middle Ages. It can also
mean “medieval,” referring to the historical
period associated with castles and knights in
armor. In literature the term applies to works with
a brooding atmosphere that emphasize the
unknown and inspire fear. Gothic novels
typically
feature wild and remote settings, such as
haunted
castles or wind-blasted moors, and their plots
involve violent or mysterious events.

4. AN IDEA BECOMES REALITY
In the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explains how she
came to write her famous novel.
In the summer of 1816, she and Percy Shelley were living near the poet Lord Byron
and his doctor-friend John Polidori on Lake Geneva in the Swiss Alps. During a
period of incessant rain, the four of them were reading ghost stories to each other
when Byron proposed that they each try to write one.
For days Shelley could not think of an idea. Then, while she was listening to Lord
Byron and Percy discussing the probability of using electricity to create life artificially,
according to a theory called galvanism, an idea began to grow in her mind:
The next day she started work on Frankenstein.A year later, she had completed her
novel. It was published in 1818, when Shelley was nineteen years old.

5. A MULTIPLE FRAME STORY
LAYERS OF COMPLEXITY
A frame story is a story within a story and Frankenstein is an example of this.
• The story begins with Walton writing about his journey and on this
journey he meets a stranger
• The stranger then begins to tell Walton his story, shifting the focus of
the book. So, the book shifts from Walton's story to Victor's and the
reader kind of forgets about Walton, until Victor reminds the reader that
Walton is listening to Victor.
• Another story is also told within Victor's story when the creature tells
Victor his story.
The Frame Stor y

6. NOVEL BEGINS WITH A SERIES OF
LETTERS FROM ROBERT WALTON TO
HIS SISTER, MARGARET SAVILLE
• Walton is a captain of a ship headed on a dangerous voyage to the North
Pole
• His looking for the shortest route between the South and North poles and
the source of the Earth’s magnetism
• Walton writes the letters to his sister telling him that he wants to
accomplish something of great importance.

7. LETTER 1
In letter one, Captain Walton writes to his sister about the
preparations he has to do for his voyage. These include
hiring a crew and provisioning the ship.

8. In the second letter, Walton bemoans his lack
of friends. He feels lonely and isolated,
too sophisticated to find comfort in his
shipmates and too uneducated to find a
sensitive soul with whom to share his
dreams. He shows himself a Romantic,
with his “love for the marvelous, a belief
in the marvelous,” which pushes him
along the perilous, lonely pathway he has
chosen. In the brief third letter, Walton tells
his sister that his ship has set sail and that
he has full confidence that he will achieve
his aim. The second letter introduces the
idea of loss and loneliness, as Walton
complains that he has no friends with
whom to share his triumphs and failures,
no sensitive ear to listen to his dreams and
ambitions.
LETTERS 2-3

9. LETTER 4
In the fourth letter, the ship stalls between
huge sheets of ice, and Walton and his
men spot a sledge guided by a gigantic
creature about half a mile away. The next
morning, they encounter another sledge
stranded on an ice floe. All but one of the
dogs drawing the sledge is dead, and the
man on the sledge—not the man seen the
night before—is emaciated, weak, and
starving. Despite his condition, the man
refuses to board the ship until Walton tells
him that it is heading north.

10. THE RESCUE
The stranger spends two days recovering, nursed by the crew, before he
can speak. The crew is burning with curiosity, but Walton, aware of the
man’s still-fragile state, prevents his men from burdening the stranger
with questions. As time passes, Walton and the stranger become friends,
and the stranger eventually consents to tell Walton his story. At the end
of the fourth letter, Walton states that the visitor will commence his
narrative the next day; Walton’s framing narrative ends and the
stranger’s begins.

11. CAPTAIN WALTON &
DR. FRANKENSTEIN
Walton turns to the stranger as the friend he has always wanted; his search
for companionship, and his attempt to find it in the stranger, parallels the
monster’s desire for a friend and mate later in the novel. This parallel
between man and monster, still hidden in these early letters but
increasingly clear as the novel progresses, suggests that the two may not be
as different as they seem.

12. FRANKENSTEIN THE MODERN
PROMETHEUS
In Greek mythology Prometheus is a Titan who created
man from clay. He also stole fire for human use thus
enabling progress and civilization.
Prometheus was punished for this by Zeus, the king of
the gods.
As his punishment, he was sentenced to be tied to a rock
and every day an eagle would eat his liver which would
grow back the next day to be eaten all over again.
Prometheus is a figure that represents the
Human reach for scientific knowledge
The risk of overreaching
The unintended consequences thereof.

13. TIME AND PLACE
Romanticism in art and literature was
based in part on the feeling of optimism
about human possibilities that pervaded
Western culture after the American and
French revolutions.
The novel takes place in the late 1700s in
various parts of Europe, especially Switzerland
and Germany, and in the Arctic. Frankenstein
was published in 1818 in England at the height
of the Romantic movement.

14. GALVANISM
In the early 1800s, scientists were on the verge
of discovering the potential of electricity. At this
time, scientists knew about the existence of
static electricity as well as electricity produced
by lightning.
In the 1780s, Luigi Galvani, a professor of
anatomy conducted experiments on animal tissue using a machine
that could produce electrical sparks. He concluded
that animal tissue contained electricity in the
form of a fluid. Galvani’s theory of “animal electricity”
was shown to be incorrect, but he had
proven that muscles contracted in response to
an electrical stimulus.
In the novel, Frankenstein learns about the controversial theory
of “galvanism” as part of his scientific training
at a university in Germany. Today, galvanism
refers to a direct current of electricity produced
by a chemical reaction.

15. THEMES
Pursuit of Knowledge
Shroud of Secrecy
Man’s Inhumanity to Man
Feminism

16. TEACHER RESOURCES
T H E G L E N C O E L I T E R A T U RE
L I B R A R Y
Frankenstein Study Guide
Secondary Solutions
www.4secondarysolutions.com
www.secondarysolutionsblog.com
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Teacher’s Guide and Lesson Activities
Common Core State Standards Aligned
Elizabeth Chapin A. Pinotti