Why Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?

MARY SHELLEY A N D H E R I N S P I R A T I O N F O R F R A N K E N S T E I N

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About Mary Shelley - pg. 2 Deaths + Family Life - pg. 3 The Nightmare - pg. 4 1800s Science - pg. 5 Bibliography - pg. 6

“BEWARE; FOR I AM FEARLESS, AND THEREFORE POWERFUL.” ABOUT MARY SHELLEY

Mary Shelley was born in London, England in 1797. She died on February 1, 1851, and was "laid to rest with the cremated remains of her late husband's heart," Percy Shelley (Biography.com). Shelley was a remarkable woman- she wrote Frankenstein at the young age of nineteen. But what caused her to write such a morbid tale at that age?

WHY DID MARY SHELLEY WRITE FRANKENSTEIN?

Deaths + Family Life “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

Mary Shelley’s life was plagued by three deaths, two of which she indirectly caused. The first of which was her mother. Shelley's mother, Mary Wollenscraft, died due to a “postpartum infection only 11 days after Mary's birth” (Badalamenti 420). This led to Shelley growing up without a mother who loved and cared for her, and eventually a distant father. Mary’s poor family life might have lead to Victor’s abhorrence to the idea of the monster being his ‘son’. The next death was that of Shelley’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay. Imlay committed suicide in Swansea, United Kingdom after arriving there on a trip. She was found dead in her hotel room, such as Elizabeth is in the novel. Imlay felt pushed out by her family, and it is thought that she killed herself because of this despondency. Imlay’s death was a blow to Shelley, and might have inspired the monster's attitude towards humans. The third and final death was Harriet Shelley, the first wife of Percy Shelley.

He ended up leaving pregnant Harriet Shelley for Mary Shelley, causing Harriet to throw herself into the Serpentine River.

These deaths, along with a poor family life, affected Mary Shelley’s life, and ended up inspiring some of the key events of Frankenstein.

THE NIGHTMARE Henry Fuseli's painting, The Nightmare, might have been another inspiration of Elizabeth’s death. It is said that the painting spoke to Shelley with the death of her mother, her mother’s career, and the arguments Shelley was having with her father and soon-to-be husband. The Nightmare depicts a lifeless woman sprawled on a bed with a monster crouching on top of her and a horse hovering in the curtains behind her. Shelley’s scene is very similar, but “in the novel Mary Shelley has merely moved the monster from the bed to the window” (Ward 21). Although it is not an exact copy, the same eeriness of the painting exists in Elizabeth’s death. By drawing from this painting’s mood, Shelley was able to strike terror in the hearts of her readers, and subsequently create a literary classic for all time.

WHY DID MARY SHELLEY WRITE FRANKENSTEIN?

1800s science Interestingly enough, some people of Mary Shelley’s time were trying to make their own ‘monsters’.

Reanimating corpses was a real goal some scientists had at the time, and people believed that one day bringing someone back to life would be possible. One such scientist was Andrew Ure who “was convinced that electricity could restore life back into the dead” (Young). Although Ure’s experiments happened a few years after Shelley wrote Frankenstein, it is likely that she was inspired by other experiments of the time involving organ transplants and blood transfusion, and possibly by the 1780 experiment of Luigi Galvani.

Galvani was able to make a pair of dead frog legs move with electricity, and his experiment has stood the test of time, so it is quite possible that Shelley drew inspiration from this experiment for Frankenstein.

WORKS CITED Badalamenti, Anthony F. “Why Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?” Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 45, no. 3, 2006, pp. 419–439. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27512949.

“Harriet Shelley.” Frankenstein -- Articles, knarf.english.upenn.edu/People/hshelley.html.

Harriet Westbrook. mirfaces.com/mary-shelley-creator-frankenstein/harriet-westbrook/.

“Illustration of Andrew Ure Reanimating the Corpse of Matthew Clydesdale.” Atlas Obscura, 31 Oct. 2016, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-real-electric-frankenstein-experiments of-the-1800s.

“Mary Shelley.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017, www.biography.com/people/mary-shelley-9481497.

“Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft.” Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Mary Wollstonecraft.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein.

“The Nightmare.” Smarthistory , 9 Aug. 2015, smarthistory.org/henry-fuseli-the-nightmare/.

Ward, Maryanne C. “A Painting of the Unspeakable: Henry Fuseli's ‘The Nightmare’ and the Creation of Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein.’” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 33, no. 1, 2000, pp. 20–31. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1315115.

Young, Lauren. “The Real Electric Frankenstein Experiments of the 1800s.” Atlas Obscura, Atlas Obscura, 31 Oct. 2016, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-real-electric-frankenstein experiments-of-the-1800s.

Maya Sabatini

November 2018