Biographical Criticism of Mary Shelley, Essay Example

How is the Frankenstein story related to Mary Shelley’s own life experiences?  Mary Shelley recycled the conflicts and traumas of her first nineteen years into the Frankenstein story. At the age of nineteen she mirrored her earlier life experiences through a horror story that has endured for two centuries.  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story paralleled her soap-opera life experiences in dramatic ways.

Born in London in1797 to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and William Godwin, both were distinguished authors and considered radical for their time. Mary’s mother died giving birth to her. Her female caretaker abandoned her at age 3 ½.  Mary’s stepmother resented her.  Mary spent most of her life integrating early emotional wounds and suffered bouts of depression, certainly expected from her personal history. (Badalamenti 421) Byron, Shelley and their intellectual circle nurtured and provided the atmosphere where Mary was able to develop her own intellectual thoughts and ideas. (Duncker 234)  In1813, when Mary was 16, she met Percy Shelley, a married man with a pregnant wife. They fell in love, but her father condemned the relationship. She therefore ran away to France with Percy Shelley accompanied by her stepsister Jane (Clara).  When the trio ran out of money they returned to London and to Harriet, Percy’s pregnant wife.

Harriet helped them out financially.  Mary was also pregnant. She gives birth prematurely to a girl that dies12 day later. Percy wanted a son and was not supportive of Mary. Percy ignores Mary and spends his time flirtatiously with Jane, the stepsister and also with Byron. Mary is deep in grief over her child and also feels tremendous guilt over being pregnant at the same time Harriet delivers Percy’s second child.  Mary is further depressed over alienation with her father. In 1817 Fanny her half sister, and Harriet, commit suicide.  Within two weeks of Harriet’s death, Percy marries Mary.  Mary is then reconciled with her father. Another child named Clara is born and she dies at 13 months of age. (Doherty)

In 1816, Mary, Percy, a new son named William, and Jane travel to Geneva, Switzerland to meet Byron. The group enjoyed reading ghost stories and Byron proposed they each write a competitive ghost story. Everyone but Mary came up with a story.  She wanted to create a story that would be thrilling for its horror and she was asked every morning, “Have you thought of a story?”  She related how her struggle to find a story gave her great difficulty falling asleep.  On the night of June 16, 1816, shortly after she fell asleep, Mary woke up after having a terrible dream that really frightened her. “The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me and I wished to exchange the ghostly image of my fancy for the realities around.” (Dickerson)  The story comes to Mary as part of a dream, her unconscious is at work.  She recognizes how sympathy is needed to promote her “hideous progeny” (her story), she states that she must write so as to “frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night.”  Mary does not reason her way into the story, it comes to her as part of a dream, as part of her unconscious, her subconscious feelings being revealed. (Dickerson)

Much of Mary’s life is expressed almost literally in the novel.  Most of the comparisons that follow refer to her life while writing the novel. The novel’s opening scene is the North Pole.  Percy had wanted to see the poles unfrozen. (Badalamenti 426) The main character in Mary’s novel is Victor Frankenstein.  Percy as a child called himself Victor. (Small, 1973)  Victor Frankenstein’s family is wealthy.  Percy’s family is aristocratic. Victor Frankenstein’s sister/cousin was named Elizabeth.  He loved Elizabeth and planned to marry her. Percy Shelley’s favorite sister was named Elizabeth. Percy is interested in incest. Percy also planned to marry Mary. Victor’s younger brother is named William. Mary named her son William after her father. We can observe that she tried to gain her father’s good will by naming her son after him and using the name William for the boy in the novel.  She was nursing William while writing the novel and was alienated from her father during the early writing of the novel.

Victor experiments with science in order to discover the principles of life. When Percy was younger he experimented with electro-and biochemistry. Percy’s interest in these sciences is closely related to his character. In 1802 when Percy was ten and Galvani’s experiments reanimated expired life with electricity became news; child Percy began a ten-year study in experiments in electrochemistry. Mary was aware of Galvani’s work on dead creatures and the idea of regenerating life, which she listened to intently from her learned houseguests. Mary was also well read. Mary also dreamt of her dead daughter reanimated by fire. Electricity was a new wonderful science. (Doherty 5) Percy often used his knowledge sadistically as evidenced by Mary’s journal entry on” Jane’s horrors.” Victor’s mother contracted scarlet fever from Elizabeth and dies. Percy’s sister Elizabeth had scarlet fever. Victor Frankenstein took nine months to create his monster in the novel.  William was nursing when Mary began the novel and was in her third pregnancy when the novel was half finished.

Victor and the monster meet at the mer de glace, Chamonix, to discuss the monster’s demand for a female mate. Mary and Percy visit this area while Mary’s writing the novel.

Safie is motherless and is loved by Felix.  Mary is motherless and is loved by Percy. Safie’s father betrays Safie’s trust. Mary is estranged from her father due to her illicit affair with Percy. Victor Frankenstein goes to Orkneys to create a female companion for the monster.  Mary spent time in Scotland in order to reduce tensions with her stepmother. Victor is asked by Elizabeth and his father if he loves someone else.  Percy was not monogamous. Victor Frankenstein dies at age twenty-five.  Percy was twenty-five when he married Mary and when she finished the novel. (Badalamenti *page number is missing*) This comparison may suggest Mary’s anger towards Percy and the monster’s assertion for a female of his kind may be Mary’s wish for a companion of her own kind, a faithful lover.  There maybe an argument to Mary’s anger over Percy’s demands for a male child and the monster demanding a female creation.

This paper speculates that Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein was written as an unconscious way of expressing her hurt feelings deriving from her relationship with Percy Shelley.  Mary was unable to deal with her feelings consciously because she was very young, sixteen when she met Percy and nineteen when she began the novel. She unconsciously used the novel as a vehicle to express her pain and rage.

Works Cited

Badalamenti, A. 2006. Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein? Journal of Religion and Health. Vol. 45, No.3.

Duncker, P. 2004. Mary Shelley’s Afterlives: Biography and Invention. Women: a cultural review. Vol.15, No.2.

Doherty, S. 2003. The medicine of Shelley and Frankenstein. Emergency Medicine. Vol. 15, 389-391.

Dickerson, V. 1993. The Ghost of Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Rhodes College, Memphis, TN.

Hunter, J. P. 1996.  Frankenstein. Mary Shelley. W.W. Norton and Company copyright.