Frankenstein
Mary W. Shelley
1797-1851

ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

• 1798-1832
• Emphasized the importance of the individual
• Valued imagination, subjectivity, and emotions
• Romantic hero is passionate, uninhibited, and unconventional.
• Hero is often an artist, social rebel, or melancholy outcast.
• Novel was critiqued as romantic genre.

GOTHIC ELEMENTS

• Popular 1760-1820
• Mystery, supernatural, horror
• A work with brooding atmosphere, emphasizes the unknown, and inspires fear.
• Have wild and remote settings- haunted castles, moors
• Plots have violent or mysterious events

THINGS TO KNOW

• Framework story -a story within a story and the inner story is the most important
• Epistolary novel-novel composed of letters
• Allusion-an indirect reference
• Verisimilitude-the appearance of being true
• Prometheus-Titan tortured for eternity

Setting
Novel takes place 1700s
Switzerland,Germany,
Arctic and other parts of Europe

Shelley wrote the book in one year on a proposal by Lord Byron to see who could write a ghost story.

CHARACTERS

• Robert Walton ship captain
• Victor Frankenstein scientist
• The creature unnamed being
• Henry Clerval Victor's best friend
• Alphonse & Caroline Victor's parents
• Elizabeth his wife
• Earnest & William his brothers

Motifs are recurring structures,contrasts, or literary devices that help develop major themes.
-Passive women
-Abortion

Symbols are objects, characters,figures,or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
-light and fire