Mary Shelley was born in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died ten days after giving birth to her. She was one of the first feminists and her father was the writer and political journalist William Godwin, who became famous with some revolutionary works and attitudes to most social institutions, including marriage. In her childhood Mary Shelley was left to educate herself amongst her father's intellectual circle. In 1813, at the age of 16, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, who came into Godwin's circle, and she ran away to France and Switzerland with him. They married in 1816 and their first child, a daughter, died in Venice, Italy, a few years later. The story of Frankenstein started on summer in 1816 when Mary joined with Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont near Geneva. She took a challenge to write the most frightening ghost story and, with her husband's encouragement, she completed the novel within a year.

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FRANKENSTEIN (178 KB)
Science-fiction
People read Frankenstein as a story of fear and danger, but Mary Shelley expressed in it beliefs that were important to her. She believed that human beings are naturally good. They become evil only because society makes them lie and cheat and behave badly. In Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein has tried to create "the perfect man", but he is ugly, so ugly that people fear and hate him. Society produced the dangerous Monster instead of the perfect man.  
About this story
The novel starts with series of letters from Robert Walton to his sister. Walton is an English Arctic explorer who spots a strange creature on a dog-sled. The exhausted Victor Frankenstein arrives, in pursuit of the creature,and while recuperating tells his story. He has been born into a wealthy Geneva family. After his mother dies of scarlet fever and becomes a student of natural philosophy and medicine. Inspired by occult philosophy and the teaching of his mentor, Waldman, he builds a creature in the semblance of a man and gives it life. It body is assembled from parts which Frankenstein has stolen from butcher shops, dissecting rooms, and charnel-houses. The creature is repeatedly rejected by those who see it, but the monster proves intelligent, and later highly articulate. Receiving no love, it becomes embittered. Frankenstein deserts his creation, who disappears. The novel contains no supernatural elements. Frankenstein is a scientist who challenges the Creator of the world with the possibilities of modern science, but is destroyed by his own ethical irresponsibility.

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