Shelley uses nature as a restorative agent for Victor Frankenstein. While he seems to be overcome with grief by the murders of his friends and family, he repeatedly shuns humanity and seeks nature for health, relaxation and to strengthen his...

Suffering is a major thematic element in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. The Wretch constantly struggles mentally with negative experiences of rejection. The psychological suffering endured illustrates self-realization through a new found...

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the parent-child relationships that are introduced are surprisingly critical to the manner the novel plays out. Through each literal and metaphorical pair, the course the child leads is in direct relation...

As a professor of psychology and the author of a host of books that examine various psychological elements at play in some of the most recognized pop culture mainstays within the science fiction genre, Sherri Ginn seems more than qualified to...

Exclusively raising opposition to commonplace phenomena can only go as far as just that: talk of a new contrary, and usually unwanted, opinion. The crucial ingredient in making a significant impact with a foreign idea is to make a claim so...

Man is a deleterious being, a poison to itself and enervates the very foundation of the world it calls home. Forsaken to bear the weight our sins, we humans cannot veer from this obstinate track, a byproduct of our mulish actions. Mary Shelly...

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the novel is formed of three interlinked but ultimately separate narratives. The outer frame for the narrative takes the form of Walton’s letters to his sister Margaret. It is through this conduit that Victor’s...

The opposition between the natural and the unnatural is particularly prominent in gothic literature and the transgression of the boundaries between the two is often seen to be condemned. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth(1606), Mary Shelley’s novel ...

There is an old cliché which remarks that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Eyes convey meaning and emotion. They reflect happiness, love, fear, and pain. They hold secrets, reveal lies, and leak emotion. They allow us to see the world around...

The creation of life is a cautionary metaphor for the advancement of science in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Today, however, this type of life-generating science is commonplace. It does not take place in the laboratory of a mad scientist, but in...

Literature is an amalgamation of historical and social context alongside the writer’s personal feelings. This is why a sole interpretation of ‘Frankenstein’ is so difficult to come up with. Shelley came from a radical background of two vocally...

During the 1800’s, when Mary Shelley first began to write, she struggled to show her husband Percy that she was in charge of herself and her artistry. Shelley describes Percy as constantly being anxious about her having to prove herself and find...

For many, it is hard to think of the world of science and the art of literature working in tandem. In the 1800s, the discipline of natural philosophy rapidly changed due to the Enlightenment, moving toward formal sciences. Romanticism served as...

Over time, the presence of patriarchal ideologies in the Western world has lessened drastically. Yet in the past, women have lived in brutal societal conditions that most people, especially men, cannot imagine. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the...

Both The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are novels that introduce dangers in the form of an ‘enemy’ – the details of which enemy are largely unknown by the reader. Wells and Shelley, though dealing with enemies...

Revolution was a key idea to the philosophy of the Romantic writers, whether it be social, cultural or aesthetic. It is in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, however, that the most overt revolutionary political statements are made while ...

In the wide spectrum of humanistic characteristics, that of desire is one of the most prominent. It is an emotion that is challenging to resist, as it tends to control many aspects of life because of the strength it possesses. In the realm of...

In the early 1800s, tense relationships between Europe and the rest of the world greatly impacted modern world history. In 1803, the newly formed United States nearly doubled its domain after purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France. Soon...

Author Mary Shelley uses the creature in her book Frankenstein to depict the dangers of humans creating artificial intelligence. Shelley presents these ideas through using Victor Frankenstein as a creator of a new species of life, and the creature...

Mary Shelley develops the character Victor Frankenstein, a young chemist who discovers the secrets of creating life, with an unending thirst for knowledge. His studies and desires lead him to build a Creature which wreaks havoc on Victor and all...

Published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains a revolutionary literary achievement whose iconic monster continues to captive modern readers. William Shakespeare, hundreds of years prior to Shelley, also cast a monster at the center of his...

As Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein delves deeper into his search for the causes of life, he becomes consumed by his quest for the answer to his question as he toils over his creation – a decrepit but mortal form compiled of...

Bennett and Royle, in their book `An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory’, state that `the relationship between literature, secrecy and secrets is fundamental1’. In the novels I have chosen, this `fundamental’ dynamic is seen in their...

Humankind has been unravelling the secrets of the universe for millennia, discovering more about the world in the process; but will we ever reach a point where we know too much? That is indeed the premise of Shelley’s “The Modern Prometheus”; a...