Studyguide.org							A Web Site for Mrs. Adams' English Classes
Homepage

Frankenstein

                                         Robert DeNiro as the Creature

Creation  Life  Death  Passion   Revenge

Mary Shelley's  own mother died in childbirth with Mary; thus the perils and heartbreak of pregnancy and childbirth were never far from Mary who grew up with a  grieving father.  Young Mary Shelley, at age 17, miscarried her first baby. She later wrote in a letter to friend Leigh Hunt.... "I dreamt  that my little baby came to life again...that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived.  Awake and find no baby.  I think about the little thing all day.  Not in good spirits."    Soon,  Mary was pregnant again at age 18  and worried about the new life she was carrying.  While consuming  anguish coursed through her, Shelley found  a voice through her masterpiece Frankenstein. She physically and literally created life as she wrote the novel.

Looking for a terrific Frankenstein Study Guide?  Click here.

Before beginning Frankenstein, read the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the Myth of Prometheus to help you better understand Mary Shelley’s story.

Percy Bysshe Shelley's Poem "Mutabiity"  (quoted in the novel)

• Mutability

  We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon:
  How relentlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
  Streaking the darkness radiantly!-- yet soon
  Night closes round, and they are lost forever:
  
  Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
  Give various response to each varying blast,
  To whose frail frame no second motion brings
  One mod or modulation like the last.
  
  We rest.-- A dream has power to poison sleep;
  We rise.-- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
  We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
  Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
  
  It is the same!-- For, be it joy or sorrow,
  The path of departure still is free:
  Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
  Nought may endure but Mutability.
                  --1814

   

  
   

   

Click here to see more images of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein.