Author: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein was a scientist, not The Monster! He recites to Robert Walton the series of events that lead up to the moments before his death. In regard to the creation of his 'monster' he says: "I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race."--Ch. 20

"Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."

The creature is also tormented. "'Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.'"--Ch. 15

This is a complex tale on the meaning of beauty, the meaning of life, and what it is to be fair and just in the world. Life was complicated for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851). She was the daughter of very modern parents: author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) and one of the founders of the anarchist movement William Godwin (1756-1836). Her mother died when she was very young. Then her father re-married. In her teens she met her future husband, already married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Because of her father's disapproval, they eloped and spent many weeks travelling abroad with Mary's beloved step-sister Claire. A year after their first child born out of wedlock died, they got married. Romantic poet Lord Byron had a profound effect on Mary and Percy, with tumultuous ties to family members and leading a life of 'open' relationships, all in the pursuit of 'true love'. Mary was not as keen as Percy on having an open relationship. But these personal issues aside, she wrote her Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein or; The Modern Prometheus (1818) at the age of twenty. It did not at first bring her to fame. When Percy died four years later she immersed herself in the project of publishing his poems.