Mary Shelley Frankenstein Mary Shelley\'s

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is set in two basic locations, the first being any metropolitan area of the era and the second being the artic tundra. By far the glacial region is the most important as it signifies an extreme, associated heavily with the extremes that might be present in other literature, like Dante's Inferno, which people assume is a very hot place but some argue could be perceived as a very cold place. Either way, Shelley makes reference to Dante in the work and some readers have perceived the characters travels through the work as assuming the character of a trip through hell. (Shelley, 1961, p. 50) in general it simply presents a place on earth that is inhospitable to normal humans. Additionally Shelley speaks of the very cold and inhospitable weather that was present where she her husband and Lord Byron had been staying, that had driven them inside their lodgings and caused them to muse in front of a fire rather than spend time on other things. This may have marked Shelley's idea of the setting of the work. (Shelley, 1961, p. 6) a super human trial must take place in a supra human place, and the travels of Frankenstein were a trial fro his own morality, while the trial of the Beast is a sort of cleansing path.

The work cannot be discussed without discussing the character of Frankenstein himself. He is a driven scientist hoping to give to man the ability to reanimate life. He bases his moral decisions on a secular position that he believes is superior to the superstitions of man.

In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. (Shelley, 1961, p. 44)

Frankenstein challenges the values of man that are based on fear and thus goes forward to create a beast that even Dante could not have conceived of. (Shelley, 1961, p. 50) He then chases the beast to his own death.

The Beast on the other hand exemplifies a helpless child in many ways, resenting the fact of his own existence and vilifying his maker for having made him without thought of what a lonely and destructive life he would face.

You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured, wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal when all human kind sinned against me?