Mary Wollstonecraft Books

The main idea of this novel came to Mary Shelley from a dream she had in the midst of a story writing contest during an extended visit by herself, her husband Percy, and Byron. They'd engaged in a contest to write a horrific story. The two, more famous writers didn't produce anything that went anywhere, but Mary Shelley's story, "Frankenstein" grew into one of the best monster novels ever written.

The book is a frame narrative, written in the form of journal style letters from an explorer sailing through the arctic. The main story is told from Dr. Frankenstein's perspective after most of the plot has already occured. Frankenstein is in the midst of chasing down his creation and in retelling the story, from his decidedly slanted view, the question of who the real monster is, the creation or Frankenstein himself, arises.

man, dis book was off the hook up in this beezy. man, i was scary sometimes. i was nice. you should read dis piece because it was nice.

"Frankenstein" begins and ends in the frozen Arctic waste as the crew of an ice-locked ship discovers two antagonists locked in a deadly game of pursuit and capture. Baron Victor Frankestein has created a monster which destroyed everything and everyone Frankenstein held dear. Frankenstein, swearing revenge, has pursued the monster half way around the world. Finally, exhausted and near death he meets his nemesis on board the ship. The story is told in a series of flashbacks as Frankenstein recounts his pitiful tale of woe to the captain of the ship. The story structure remains fairly true to the plot of the book, but the writer did introduce some innovations.

Most surviving old time radio shows are half hour segments for weekly broadcast. Apparently, however, daily serials with 15 minute episodes were also popular. "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar" made good use of this format, with a story beginning on Monday and concluding with the capture of the criminal on Friday. The longer format gave the opportunity for greater character development and more fully conceived plots.

With all the advantages afforded by the serial format, "Frankenstein" makes for somewhat of a disappointment. The dialog is over-dramatic, the characters are wooden, and they engage in illogical, inadequately motivated behavior throughout. One unintentionally humorous feature of the play comes as the actors repeatedly deliver mid-twentieth century slang phrases with German accents. Another discordant note is struck when Frankenstein, believing himself near death, calls to his deceased wife "Elizabeth, I'm coming to you!" Of course the writers had no way of anticipating that Redd Foxx would make that phrase a comic refrain as Fred Sanford. One particularly good thing about the play was the monster's self-justifying speeches. Taken alone they sounded like the high-minded complaint of an innocent-but-put-upon victim of circumstance. The monster's protestations of innocence in the face of persecution fell flat, however, when measured against his evil actions.

Despite the weaknesses of plot, dialog, and character development, the play had power. I listened to it straight through on a long business trip. It didn't seem nearly as long as it would have if I'd only had the radio for companionship.

Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" is a major novel in Western Civilization. I always think of it as representing the paradigm shift from religion to science, embodied in the contrast with the myth of Faust with the story of Victor Frankenstein. The crucial question in this novel is simply which is Frankenstein's createst sin, bringing the creature to life or abandoning it once he had done so. However, this review is not really about Shelley's novel, because if you are a teacher you have already decided whether or not you want to use the novel in your class. The question here is what value this Longman Cultural Edition would have over a regular edition of "Frankenstein."

This Longman Critical Edition includes Shelley's introduction to the 1831 edition and a revision of the section of the novel dealing with the adoption of Elizabeth. There are three main sections to the Contexts part of this volume. First, Monsters, Visionaries, and Mary Shelley puts the novel in the context of what her contemporaries were writing and talking about. Consequently there are other writings of Shelley along with Edmund Burke, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, among others. There are also some descriptions from Richard Brinsley Peake's dramatic adaptation of the novel and even Dr. Spock's chapter "Enjoy Your Baby" from his famous book (interesting choice, you must admit). Second, Milton's Satan and Romantic Imaginations looks at both Milton and the Bible, as well as additional writings from Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Third, What the Reviews Said all dealing with commentaries written between 1818 and 1832.

What this should make quite clear to you is that this Longman Cultural Edition relies mainly on what I would consider primary documents the vast majority of which are contemporarneous with the writing of Shelley's novel. This is a synchronic rather than a diachronic perspective, which is of more value to a class that is considering "Frankenstein" in the context of the time and place in which it was written (i.e., 19th century gothic novels rather than horror literature through the ages). Susan J. Wolfson has edited a volume that will help readers understand the world in which Shelley wrote her classic novel. If doing so is important to your class, or is a perspective you enjoy exploring, this edition of "Frankenstein" will certainly fit your needs.

This is a really fine, helpful edition of one of the greatest novels of all time, edited by one of the greatest American scholars in her field. A wonderful edition, ideal for classroom use.

Frankenstein is a great work, though one that has consistently been underrated and misrepresented. Frankenstein is, in the words of Donald H. Reiman, "the most seminal literary work of the Romantic period". In my opinion, it is a work of profound and radical ideas, written in poetically powerful prose. Frankenstein is not really a gothic novel, although its author sometimes employs gothic conventions and language, and even spoofs them. Rather, Frankenstein is an enduring myth, a novel of ideas, and above all, a moral allegory about the evil effects of intolerance and prejudice, ostracism and alienation, both to the victims of intolerance and to society at large.
I'll concentrate on thisparticular edition -- the Longman edition edited by Susan J. Wolfson. Most importantly, this is the original 1818 edition, rather than the inferior, bowdlerized 1831 edition -- which is the most common, and the only one that was available for well over a century. Unfortunately, this edition can not be recommended owing to the typeface, Bodoni, which makes the text hard to read and makes it difficult to concentrate. Bodoni can sometimes be effective as a display typeface, but it is never appropriate for extended text. This is too bad, as there is some good material in the back. The best editions of the 1818 text are those edited by James Rieger (Chicago) or by J. Paul Hunter (Norton).
Please check out my own book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, which makes the case that Frankenstein was really written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest poets in the English language. I also argue that male love, both idealized and demonized, is a central theme of Frankenstein.
Five stars for Frankenstein, three stars for this edition.

I had the pleasure of reading this book while doing research for my biography, "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy" (Corinthian Books, September 2002). Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects" (London: J. Johnson, 1792) had a profound influence on U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, who became one of her earliest and most influential supporters in the United States. He immediately embraced Wollstonecraft's concepts of equal education and incorporated them into creating, through his teenage daughter, Theodosia, his model for the ultimate woman of the future: an exotic new intellectual hybrid embodying the education of a man with the natural qualities of a woman who possesses both the ability to reason -- and a soul (!!). Janet Todd's insightful telling of Wollstonecraft's life and her careful explanation of how Wollstonecraft's credo developed was both enlightening and enormously instructive. Todd's clear writing style makes her subject come alive. As a scholar writing a biography of Aaron Burr's daughter, I bought this book and read it because I had to. But I was so delighted with it that I then went back and re-read it because I WANTED to!

This is a very good book. It is based on comprehensive research, extremely detailed, well written and sensitive. It is the best biography of Mary Wollstoencraft ever written and will remain so for a long time.

The really curious thing that comes through is that Wollstonecraft was less of a feminist than one might think. In fact she was an intelligent, sensitive, somewhat high-handed and dominant, woman. Her dearest wish in life was to find a man worthy of her; her dearest fear, to be abandoned by him.

At the time she wrote her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she was thirty years old and a virgin. The volume drips with contempt for women less talented, and less chaste, than herself. This is what makes her interesting; she is a textbook-case. Is it possible that with her, as with so many others, feminism at bottom is simply an attempt by women who do not have a man to avenge themselves on those who do?

I truly enjoyed this book, as I had to read it for a paper. It tells of Mary Wollstonecraft and her travels, focusing mostly of life after A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman becuase it is heavily documented.

This is not a simple book. I found myself going to the dictionary a lot but those words help in the showing of this book as an intelligent piece of work.

Janet Todd has gone into a lot of detail when describing Wollstonecraft's life. If it described more, we'd be reading about how she held her fork and what exactly the bread looked like. Thoses details paint a more brilliant picture of MW than expected but can make the book move slowly. So much information is packed into the pages making the book a bit hard to swallow all at once.

I sincerely recommend reading the book in more than one sitting.

This is a must have resource for anyone studing or researching the history of women.

For anyone into philosophy, this is a definate read. A product of the Age of Reason, Mary Wollstonecraft applies reason to why women should be educated equally with men so both may benefit from virtue. Very intriguing even for a man. Read it.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. Wollstonecraft is not easy to read however, she makes a compelling argument. Mary Wollstonecraft viewed the institution of marriage simply as legal prostitution. She believed this to be the case for several reasons. First, the marriage laws in Britain at the time gave men legal rights over their wives including their property. The law also gave men custody of their children in event of divorce, and a woman could not even obtain a divorce without their husband's consent. For women divorce meant having to leave everything of importance in their lives behind. Thus, Wollstonecraft observed that Britain's laws left women in the unenviable position of being treated as mere chattel by their husbands. Second, Wollstonecraft argued that women's downtrodden position in society was not the cause of religious or moral teachings. She was emphatic in her assessment that it was women's denial of the same educational opportunities that men received that made them seem weak and inferior to men. Finally, she believed marriage only chained women to a life of drudgery in the home.

Armed with this information, Wollstonecraft set out to propose in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women the idea, that equal education for women was the only remedy for this grave injustice perpetrated against them, and education for women would actually strengthen the institution of marriage. She made several prescient arguments to support this idea. First, Wollstonecraft believed schoolchildren needed the contact and interaction with other schoolchildren to develop properly. So, she argued against Britain's system of elitist education, especially its private schools and boarding schools. She advocated for the creation of national public schools, funded by the state, and attended by children from the entire socio-economic strata. Second, she thought it was imperative that both boys and girls must be educated together. The reason Wollstonecraft believed in coeducation, was that when both boys and girls get to know one another from an early age they would in turn, build friendships, and learn to respect one another. Therefore, when women get married, they will be able to serve as companions to their husbands and not just as trophy wives or sexual objects. "Nay, marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses." Third, Wollstonecraft asked the question, how society could expect mothers to rear healthy boys capable of functioning as confident and productive men in society if their mothers, who raised them, were uneducated. She was horrified to think of the damage already done to children by uneducated, weak-minded mothers. Wollstonecraft articulates in beautiful fashion her argument for the need to educate women in the following quote. "If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfill the peculiar duties of their sex." This argument only enhances women's roles as wives and mothers. Finally, Wollstonecraft argued that the implementation of her educational reforms would prove to be a key element leading to the improvement of the institution of marriage in particular, and for family life in general. "Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue."

Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and feminism.

This is the original story with a nice collection of notes and analyses.

The novel Frankenstein conveys the themes of friendship, ambition, and the conflict between the two. The message is that the deeper need of the two is friendship, but that we are susceptible to the temptations of ambition, which can destroy friendship. Ostensibly, Victor Frankenstein had an unselfish mission to "benefit all mankind" with his scientific project. His "selfless" ambition failed him and proved to aim at self-glory because he wanted to create a race that would bless him as its father. In Captain Walton's second letter to his sister, we learn that although he has a well-trained crew, he has no soul companion; this need he regards as a "most severe evil." Walton's exploration of the secluded and frozen Arctic serves as a metaphor for how his ambition has removed him from society. His ambition even threatened his own and his crew members' lives when ice surrounded and trapped his boat. The message is that if one sets out ambitiously to benefit mankind, once that person has acheived their goal, their prominence sets them apart from the same society they set out to benefit.

Victor had a much more intense ambition than Walton, with corespondingly more disasterous results. As Frankenstein prepared for his project, he isolated himself from his friends and family to laboriously study the sciences and he would later postpone his marriage for this project. The embodiment of his ambition, the repulsive monster, would eventually slay several of Victor's loved family members, including his fiance on their wedding night. Even the monster feels as his deepest need a human relationship, which he has none. While observing an impoverished family, "the bitter gall of envy" arose in the monster. He considers them rich because they have the companionship of each other even though they are in financial poverty. When Frankenstein rejects the monster's pleas to create for him a mate of the same race, the monster sets out on an unstoppable path to destruction and an ambitious one indeed. The novel links ambition with destruction, particularly destruction of companionship and conveys friendship as a great need for mankind.

I don't think the story conveys that all ambition is destructive. At the end of the story, Victor has great regret for the results of his ambition, but he still has pride for his effort. Although he cautions us that we would be better off to believe our "native town to be the world," he adds, "yet another may succeed." You could interpret this as Victor not "learning his lesson;" that mankind will continue to give in to harmful passions. Another, much different analysis could be that this story portrays that limited ambition, integrated with society and not aimed at self-glory, can be virtuous. After all, for the teenage author of a classic, enduring novel to tell us that all ambition will destroy us would be a contradiction.

This book is an excellent text for the study of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. It will fascinate those interested in the life of Mary Shelley, students studying Frankenstein, and those interested in learning about an 19th Century woman writer, who wrote a novel about a monster that has since become a universal archetype of isolation and societal rejection. In this text, it is demonstrated how events in Mary Shelley's life, her fears of motherhood, and her study of current philosophic and scientific theories all contributed to the development of the novel. Mary Shelley is proven to be an intelligent and complex woman writer of the Romantic Literary tradition

This book captures every aspect of Mary Shelley's life that evolved into her fictive imagination. The readers are introduced to much less popular works such as The Last Man, Lodore and Mathilda which actually give a unique perspective to Frankenstein. For myself there were some places I felt I was given too many examples, I had already figured out Mellor's point several paragraphs before, but the book makes every possible attempt to explain the novels so that everyone understands.

Book arrived in very good condition after a bit of a wait - very decent service.

As someone who reads a lot of history and biographies, I find it a rare pleasure when a book is both authoritative and entertaining. I really enjoyed reading this, and found it wonderfully detailed.

When Matilda's dad admits to his daughter that he loves her the world falls apart for them both. How can this be so? Mary Shelley creates a scenario - so similar to aspects of her own childhood - that makes sense of this. The love expressed in this ever-so-ambiguous word is, in this case, the inappropriate form of love. What disappoints me about this is that no-one recovers from this situation, and others continue to be damaged/hurt. Once again, as I've seen in so many other works of fiction, the 'damaged' person is given no chance of recovery, of rising above the disaster.

Mary Shelley is such an interesting person (far more interesting than the popular interpretations of her novel Frankenstein suggest) but to appreciate her, even in part, I believe you need to consider her parents. Her father was William Godwin, perhaps the real originator of anarchism (although I don't think he used that word). He was a firm believer that people acting alone can achieve more and better than is achieved by having them controlled and imposed on by laws and governments. Mary's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft - a champion of equal rights for women. When Mary became pregnant, Mary and William chose to get married - not for themselves - they didn't believe in the institution of marriage - but for the child. Sadly Mary Wollstonecraft died in childbirth and William was left with a new baby (whom he named Mary after her mother) and a slightly older girl, Fanny. All of William's beliefs that people should live their own lives in their own preferred ways was challenged by Mary - especially in her relationship with the poet Percy Bysse Shelley whom she married (hence the name Mary Shelley).

When Mary lost her own baby boy William (named after her father?), she got some of her grief out by writing Matilda. But it appalled William and he refused to allow it to be printed. Even the strongest philosophies will fall apart!! But if you read Matilda and recall the facts of William and Mary's lives, you will see why.

This is a valuable book, containing not only Mary's short novel Matilda, but also two works of her mother.

Recommended other reading:
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (this is a thoughtful and serious work)
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice - William Godwin (this is very long but is also very thoughtful and a great lead in to reading more accessible anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin, as well as less accessible ones like Max Stirner)
Caleb Williams - William Godwin

The two stories of Mary Wollstonecraft 'Mary' and 'Maria' (the latter unfortunately unfinished) tackle the same problem: the position of women in society. 'But a wife being as much a man's property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own.'
The reactions of their protagonists are diametrically opposed.
Mary's attitude to life is resignation: 'I cannot argue against instincts.' She longs for death, to enter a 'world where there is no giving in marriage.'
Maria, on the contrary, tries to take her destiny in her own hands and hits back: 'I feel that the evils women are subject to endure, degrade them so far below their oppressors as almost to justify their tyranny.'

Both stories show the author's general social preoccupations.
Mary is confronted with hunger, want of education, poverty and misery, but her reaction is melancholic: 'I have been wounded by ingratitude'.
Maria attacks 'the enslaved state of the labouring majority' and 'the evils which arise in society from the despotism of rank and riches.' She appeals for more social justice.

'Maria' is a much stronger work than 'Mary'. It has a better plot and its message is still actual.

'Matilda' was considered too shocking to be published for over a century, because it treats a taboo passion: incest.
It is a powerful portrait of a fatal attraction between a father and his daughter.
It is brilliantly written by an intelligent and very well read author: 'more lovely than a sunbeam, slighter, quicker than the waving plumage of a bird, dazzling as lightning and like it giving day to night, yet mild and faint, that smile came.'

The stories are excellently introduced by Janet Todd.

Highly recommended.

i read this book right after dracula and well, it's definitely a good read and an edge of your seat thriller. it has stood the test of time in terms of it's theme and lesson.

for the people who hated this book and gave it poor reviews. Really missed out on what may be the greatest novel of all time. For me it's hard to put down. And the themes are deep and everlasting ones that humans will forever struggle with. Life and death, God vs science, good and evil, spiritual themes, and social ones also, all wrapped up in a GREAT story. Oh well, you can't expect everyone to get it and resonate with it.

One thing about this Rieger version: it says it "reproduces for the first time in more than a century the text of the first edition published in 1818". Not true. Donohue produced at least three editions (I have them) around 1895 that are all the 1818 text.
Just an FYI.

Believe the hype! This book is hard to surpass. I virtually never give 5 stars to ANYTHING. This deserves it.

Once you read Shelley's classic you're going to scratch your head and wonder: Is this really the book that gave us the Karloff movie? Not to mention Herman Munster and Frankenberry. For over a century and half people have been cannibalizing this book for ideas, movies, other books, and products of every size, shape and type that our modern concept of Frankenstein holds little to no resemblence to the master work. While occasionally these bastardizations have had enjoyable results, like Young Frankenstein, it's criminal that so few people are unfamiliar with the source. Do yourself a favor and find out where it all came from. It's not nearly as creepy as you may think, but it's infinitely more thought provoking and it certainly doesn't hurt that this version is beautifully published at a very reasonable price.

It is pretty surprising that something come up with almost on a whim to
provide a diversion has come to be such an important text for two
genres, both horror and science fiction.

Victor Frankenstein's obsession with the creation of life ultimately ends in tragedy and death for those around him.

Most editions of Mary Shelley's landmark book available today follow the heavily revised 1831 version. The impulse behind this trend is an honorable one (to present what is seemingly an author's "final revision"),but the 1818 version is preferable for many reasons. Looking back on her creation in later life, Shelley felt obliged to alter the book's focus in significant ways, adding what critic Marilyn Butler accurately describes as "long passages in which her main narrator, [Victor] Frankenstein, expresses religious remorse for making a creature..." The author sought to make the 1831 edition less controversial and thereby more palatable to the tastes of the reading public. The 1818 version is closer to Mary Shelley's original intentions, though it too, unfortunately, was filtered through the sensibilities of her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, who took many of his wife's rather straightforward passages and rendered them into his own more ornate and Ciceronian style. Still, the 1818 version remains more vital, more original, and less constrained by what the author believed would be acceptable to readers in 1830s England.

It is a classic and, therefore, deserves a close reading. Norton editions are great. The text size is good, the print tends to be first-rate, and the critical essays usually include classic essays and major critics. This doesn't strike me as being worthy of the "A" list of literature, but that is a prejudice. I can't really accept any genre lit on the list, including detective, gothic, or science fiction. It is an interesting sample of this period, but I didn't get a lot out the the book itself. For one thing, the atmosphere of doom and gloom doesn't work for me. Everyone is sick and morbidly depressed and sad. This is not explained and I don't think one can easily guess. The writing works, sure, but I don't find the prose style uplifting or thrilling, as writing. The story is very familiar. As a child of the 60s, I remember well watching reruns of the classic film on TV. It is hard to divorce the brilliant film from the wordy novel. The film has some brilliant set-pieces. The novel has a lot in it and it certainly can and should be read at multiple levels, but in the end it is Victorian intellectual thought of the low order. There are other, better thinkers and novelists of far greater talent.

This is a classic and that is the reason that I read it. I liked the movie but the book is a whole other experience. I liked the format; I like the style; I liked the prose; I liked the intellectuality. I really didn't analyze it. I just read it for the fun of it. It was good. It was fun.

The chronological table in the back of the book helped me situate Mary Shelley within the time of the writing of Frankenstein. Percy B. Shelley's critique of the book, published after he died, was interesting. I liked the Criticisms in the back of the book. Most of all, I loved the Being Frankenstein created. This is the saddest, most thought provoking, book I've read in recent times (even though it's old).

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the famous feminist and author, Mary Wollstonecraft, who is best known for her work The Vindication of the Rights of Women. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a young university student, Victor Frankenstein, obsesses with wanting to know the secret to life. He studies chemistry and natural philosophy with the goal of being able to create a human out of spare body parts. After months of constant work in his laboratory, Frankenstein attains his goal and brings his creation to life. Frankenstein is immediately overwrought by fear and remorse at the sight of his creation, a "monster." The next morning, he decides to destroy his creation but finds that the monster has escaped. The monster, unlike other humans, has no social preparation or education; thus, it is unequipped to take care of itself either physically or emotionally. The monster lives in the forest like an animal without knowledge of "self" or understanding of its surroundings. The monster happens upon a hut inhabited by a poor family and is able to find shelter in a shed adjacent to the hut. For several months, the monster starts to gain knowledge of human life by observing the daily life of the hut's inhabitants through a crack in the wall. The monster's education of language and letters begins when he listens to one of them learning the French language. During this period, the monster also learns of human society and comes to the realization that he is grotesque and alone in the world. Armed with his newfound ability to read, he reads three books that he found in a leather satchel in the woods. Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Milton's Paradise Lost, and a volume of Plutarch's Lives. The monster, not knowing any better, read these books thinking them to be facts about human history. From Plutarch's works, he learns of humankind's virtues. However, it is Paradise Lost that has a most interesting effect on the monster's understanding of self. The monster at first identifies with Adam, "I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence." The monster, armed only with his limited education, thought that he would introduce himself to the cottagers and depend on their virtue and benevolence; traits he believed from his readings that all humans possessed. However, soon after his first encounter with the cottagers, he is beaten and chased off because his ugliness frightens people. The monster is overwrought by a feeling of perplexity by this reaction, since he thought he would gain their trust and love, which he observed them generously give to each other on so many occasions. He receives further confirmation of how his ugliness repels people when, sometime later, he saves a young girl from drowning and the girl's father shoots at him because he is frightful to look at. The monster quickly realizes that the books really lied to him. He found no benevolence or virtue among humans, even from his creator. At every turn in his life, humans are judging him solely based on his looks. The monster soon realizes that it is not Adam, the perfect being enjoying the world, which he is most alike. Instead, he comes to realize that he most represents Satan. The monster is jealous of the happiness he sees humans enjoy that he has never attained for himself. The monster tells Frankenstein that he found his lab journal in his coat pocket and read it with increasing hate and despair as he came to understand what Frankenstein's intent was in creating him. The monster curses Frankenstein for making a creature so hideous that even his creator turned from him in disgust.

Shelley's intent here is plain to see. "The fate of the monster suggests that proficiency in `the art of language' as he calls it, may not ensure one's position as a member of the `human kingdom." In a sense, she is showing that both her parents were mistaken when they advocated greater education reform for people. They thought education would make people better, which in turn would improve society for all. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein contradicts this belief.

Starting with the full title of Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus one can instantly see that mythology was integral to her book. Lord Byron, poet and friend of the Shelley's was writing a poem entitled Prometheus, and Mary was reading the Prometheus legend in Aeschylus' works when she had a dream, which was the impetus for her book. The Greek god Prometheus, is known for two important tasks that he performed, he created man from clay, and he stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. The stealing of fire really angered Zeus because the giving of fire began an era of enlightenment for humankind. Zeus punished Prometheus by having him carried to a mountain, where an eagle would pick at his liver; it would grow back each day and the eagle would eat it again.

The presence of fire and light in this gothic story helps to point to the similarities to Prometheus and Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster, in Shelley's book. The book uses light as a symbol of discovery, knowledge, and enlightenment. The natural world is full of hidden passages, and dark unknown scientific secrets; Victor's goal as a scientist is to grasp towards the light. Light is a by-product of fire that the monster learned quickly when he is living on his own. The monster experienced fires' duality when he first encountered it in an unattended fire in the woods. He is mesmerized by the fact that fire produces light in the darkness in the woods, but is shocked at the sensation of pain it gives him when he touches it. Victor is defiant of god in the same way that Prometheus was defiant of Zeus. Victor steals the secret of life from god and creates a human out of spare body parts. He does this out of an altruistic wish to spare humankind from the pain and suffering of death. Thus, Victor Frankenstein embodies both aspects of the Promethean myth creation and fire. Victor in a sense has the same experience with the fire of enlightenment similar to his monster; he is "burned" by the fire of enlightenment. Victor also suffers from the classic Greek tragic condition of hubris for his transgression against god and nature.

The book also adopts two other great mythic legends. One is Adam from the Bible. Victor Frankenstein bears striking resemblance to Adam and his fall from grace for eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The other is Satan, a mythic figure that Shelley admired from her readings in Milton's book Paradise Lost. In an interesting juxtaposition of booth myths, she expands on the motif of the fall from grace in her book when she portrays the monster comparing himself to Adam; after he read, Milton's book Paradise Lost. The monster tells Victor, that he at first identifies with Adam God's first creation. "I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence." However, after several incidents of mistreatment that he suffered from the humans he encountered in his travels; the monster soon realized that it is not Adam, the perfect being enjoying the world, which he was most alike. Instead, he came to realize that he most represented Satan. The monster's feelings of hatred and despair stem from the fact that humans found him grotesque to look at and would not accept him as a member of human society. The monster cursed Victor for making a creature so hideous that even his creator turned from him in disgust. Thus, it is obvious for all to see that Shelley's Frankenstein is replete with mythological references and they are central to the plot.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and literature.

Frankenstein is a great work, though one that has consistently been underrated
and misrepresented. Frankenstein is, in the words of Donald H. Reiman, "the
most seminal literary work of the Romantic period". It is a work of profound
and radical ideas, written in poetically powerful prose. Frankenstein is not
really a gothic novel, although its author sometimes employs gothic
conventions and language, and even spoofs them. Rather, Frankenstein is an
enduring myth, a novel of ideas, and above all, a moral allegory about the
evil effects of intolerance and prejudice, ostracism and alienation, both to
the victims of intolerance and to society at large.
Since there are some good reviews here, I'll concentrate on this
particular edition -- the Norton Critical Edition, edited by J. Paul Hunter.
This is one of the two best editions of Frankenstein available (the other
being the Chicago edition edited by James Rieger). Most importantly, this is
the original 1818 edition, rather than the inferior, bowdlerized 1831
edition -- which is the most common, and the only one that was available for
well over a century. Hunter's introduction is not bad. Some of the reviews
and essays in the back are good, and some are not, but this is par for the
course. The main text is intelligently annotated.
Please check out my own book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, which
makes the case that Frankenstein was really written by Percy Bysshe Shelley,
one of the greatest poets in the English language. I also argue that male
love, both idealized and demonized, is a central theme of Frankenstein.