Origins and plot
Mary Shelley’s family included the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin. The idea for Frankenstein emerged during a ghost-story contest in Geneva in 1816; the novel was published in 1818. Victor Frankenstein discovers how to give life to inanimate matter and creates a Creature from corpse parts. He abandons it, and the Creature’s loneliness and rejection eventually lead him to seek revenge.
Nested narration and the Double
The novel is epistolary, framed by Robert Walton’s letters to his sister. Within this frame, Victor recounts his life to Walton, and the Creature tells Victor his own story. These three narrative layers offer different points of view. Victor and the Creature also form a Double: both are isolated and obsessive, and their conflict ends in mutual destruction.
Gothic, science fiction, and Prometheus
- Dark settings, graveyards, secret laboratories, and emotional terror are Gothic features. The Creature’s creation, however, is presented through science, including chemistry, electricity, and galvanism, rather than magic or the supernatural. Victor is an overreacher, like a modern Prometheus who seeks nature’s secret of life. The Creature’s account of rejection raises the theme of social prejudice: he says he ought to be Adam but is treated like a fallen angel.