“The diquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated
to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to enter into the merits
of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions of the hero,
whose extinction I wept” (Shelley, 113). The Sorrows of Young Werther were important to Mary Shelley in the understanding of her dead mother as they were important to the monster in understanding human emotion. Mary Shelley’s mother tried to kill herself due to her unrequited love for Gilbert Imlay, the father of Mary’s half-sister, Fanny. Due to this, William Godwin saw many similarities between his wife and the character created by Goethe. In Godwin’s Memoirs he calls Mary Wollstonecraft the “female Werther” and states that her letters to Gilbert Imlay bear a striking resemblance to the romance of Werther (Marshall, 218). Mary Shelley would have been aware of this having already read the Memoirs. Thus, Mary Shelley utilized the work, that helped her understand the emotional state of her mother, in the novel, so that the monster to could also learn about the experience of human emotion.
The final work, that influences the novel and the monster, is Paradise Lost by John Milton. Mary Shelley spent a considerable amount of time studying this work and read it a number of times prior to writing Frankenstein ( Feldman, 89 and 96). Mary Shelley utilized this work to give her novel mythic scope and the following passage was used as the epigraph; Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me Man, did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?(Johnson, xii). The monster also read this literary work as the true history of the origin of the creation of human beings. He saw aspects of himself in both the characters of Adam and Satan. He was like Adam in that he was the first of his type of creation and was unlike any living creature. The monster, however, felt a stronger connection to the character of Satan in that he was spurned by his creator, Victor, just as Satan was cast out of heaven by God. The creature related his feelings about his identification with the characters from Paradise Lost in the following passage;
“Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different
from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the
hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous but I was
wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan
as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me”(Shelley, 114).
It is my personal belief that Mary may have also felt, at times, as the monster does in the above passage. She was human, like all others, but had parents who were political radicals, had a singular educational experience, had the origin of her own creation published for the entire world to read, and ran off with a married man. The combination of the above experiences set Mary apart from society and caused her to feel the isolation and alienation of an outcast; an outcast like her monster and Milton’s Satan. She differs from the monster in that she is notorious for her name, not her appearance, while the monster has no name and is instead an outcast due to the differences in the way he appears to others. In many ways Mary Shelley saw herself as the monster that she created and identified further with the monster by having him read the same works that she did.
Through the study of Mary Shelley’s journals and her biography, one becomes aware of how important study and research were to her. Her biography tells how the influence of her literary parents and husband provided her with a unique educational experience and how she was encouraged to conduct research. Her journals provide a detailed list of all the works that she studied and assist in relating what she studied to the creation of her timeless classic and all of the knowledge, especially of human origins, that is contained in the novel. Most importantly, the combination of the journal and her biography help answer how such a young woman with such a troubled life created such an enduring piece of literature. She had a great love of research and knowledge and used her studies in her creative output.
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Bennett, Betty T. ” Finding Mary Shelley in Her Letters.” Romantic Revisions. eds. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 292-306.
Bennett, Betty T. “Frankenstein and the Uses of Biography.” Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Frankenstein. ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990. 85-92.
Duyfhuizen, Bernard. “Periphrastic Naming in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Studies in the Novel 27 (1995): 477-492.
Feldman, Paula R. and Scott – Kilvert, Diana, eds. The Journals of Mary Shelley. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Homans, Margaret. “Bearing Demons: Frankenstein’s Circumvention of the Maternal.” New Casebooks – Frankenstein/Mary Shelley. ed. Fred Botting. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. 140-165.
Johnson, Diane. Introduction. Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. Bantam Classic Edition. New York: Bantam, 1981. vii-xix.
May, Marilyn. “Publish and Perish: William Godwin, Mary Shelley, and the Public Appetite for Scandal.” Papers on Language and Literature 26 (1990): 489-512.
Marshall, David. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Pollin, Burton R. “Philosophical and Literary Sources of Frankenstein.” Comparative Literature 17 (Spring 1965): 97-108.
“Review of Frankenstein.” British Critic 9 Apr. 1818: 432-438.
“Review of Frankenstein.” Monthly Review 85 Apr. 1818: 439.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Bantam Classic Edition. New York: Bantam, 1981.
Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley – Romance and Reality. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989