2. BIOGRAPHY OF
MARY SHELLEY
• Lived 1797-1851
• Daughter of Mary
Wollstonecraft and
William Godwin
• Married to Percy Bysshe
Shelley
• Began Frankenstein when
she was 18
3. FRANKENSTEIN
THE NOVEL
• Written in the Gothic novel
tradition
• Answer to Lord Byron’s
challenge
• Finished when Shelley was 19
• “The Modern Prometheus”
• The story has inspired many
horror stories and genres
4.
5. FRANKENSTEIN
THE MOVIES
• The first film adaptation came
out in 1910.
– Silent Film
– 16 min. long
• The most famous adaption
came out in 1931; directed by
James Whale
– Boris Karloff portrayed
the monster
• Frankenstein ranked #3 of The
101 Most Influential People
Who Never Lived
6. THE GOTHIC NOVEL
• Tradition began in 1764 by
Horace Walpole
• Juxtaposition of horror and
romance
• Pleasing terror + melodrama +
parody
• More concerned with mental
action than physical
• Began to be parodied in 1818
with Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey
7. THE PROMETHEUS STORY
• Greek Mythology:
– Titan
– Created mankind
– Stole fire from Heavens
and gave to man
– Punishment: chained to a
rock and each day a bird
eats out his liver, which
regrows and to be eaten
again the next day.
• Typically a heroic story,
not so to Shelley
9. ESSENTIAL
QUESTION
• How has technology changed what it
means to be human?
10. Part of being human is the inability to
control how life begins and ends. The
moment nature can be controlled and
we are not subject to it is the moment
we cease to be human.
11. For this research project you will be creating a
blog that outlines one scientific concept that resembles
Victor Frankenstein’s Promethean efforts.
In other words, how have scientists reached
beyond normal human bounds in recent technology?
Your blog should outline the concept fully and
also provide your personal opinions on the technology.
13. SOME IDEAS • Nuclear weapons
• Genetic Engineering
• Stem Cell Research
• Modified Food
• Factory Farming
• Abortion
• Euthanasia
• Weather Control
• Cloning
• Nuclear Energy
14. “’The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised
impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters
promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted,
and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers,
whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to
pour over the microscopes or crucible, have indeed performed
miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew
how she works in her hiding places. They ascent into the heavens;
they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of
the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited
powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the
earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own
shadows.”’
-M. Waldman (27-28)
15. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I
should first break through, and pour a torrent of light
into our dark world. A new species would bless me as
its creator and source; many happy and excellent
natures would owe their being to me. No father could
claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I
should deserve their’s.”
-Victor Frankenstein (32)
16. Much in Mary Shelley’s life was remarkable. She was the
daughter of a brilliant mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) and
father (William Godwin). She was the mistress and then wife of
the poet Shelley. She read widely in five languages, including
Latin and Greek. She had easy access to the writings and
conversations of some of the most original minds of her age.
But nothing so sets her apart from the generality of writers of
her own time, and before, and for long afterward, than her
early and chaotic experience, at the very time she became an
author, with motherhood. Pregnant at sixteen, and almost
constantly pregnant throughout the following five years; yet
not a secure mother, for she lost most of her babies soon after
they were born; and not a lawful mother, for she was not
married – not at least when, at the age of eighteen, Mary
Godwin began to write Frankenstein. So are monsters born.
-Ellen Moers, “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother”
