Frank

Professor Fox

ENG 112

3 Nov 2009

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818. The first publication of the book was an unsigned preface by her husband Percy when they lived in London. When the story was released people did not believe a 19 year old girl was capable of writing such a horror story and convinced themselves that Shelley’s husband had actually wrote it. This was also a time when women had very different life styles and were not given credit for most of their work.

Mary was surrounded by poverty and the world was in shambles. The war had just ended and had caused people to really look down on life. She wanted to create a story that would encourage people to look for the good in a person and base their opinion solely on that aspect.

Mary Shelley got the idea to write this story from her friends. Mary and her friends all decided to write a ghost story and present it to each other when it was complete. Shelley had been around “rich literature”(1) her whole life because of her father. Mary’s father was political theorist, novelist, and publisher who introduced her to eminent intellectuals and encouraged her youthful efforts as a writer.(1) Mary was a self educated student and based her teaching from her father and his friends which included people such as, critic William Hazlitt, essayist Charles Lamb and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Frankenstein changed the way society embraced different people. Shelley tells a story which displays that everyone for the most part do not take to the time to see a person from the inside. She shows us that most people simply look at the outer side of a person and make their judgments from there. It appears that Shelley is saying that during that period of time people made judgments of character based on looks rather than who that person actually is or what they stand for. She seems to encourage us to get to know a person before casting any judgment on them.

In today’s society things are...