Mary Shelley’s life and work, and the romantic motifs in her Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797 — in the 8th year of the French Revolution. Her parents already held some attention for their radical writing. Her father, William Godwin,

was a philosopher, atheist and anarchist. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft was the writer of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1790), and is considered one of the first active feminists. Both parents shaped the revolutionary ideas of the era. Although her parents didn't believe in marriage, they married to legitimize their daughter's birth.

Her mother died tragically 10 days after giving birth, so Mary Shelley never knew her mother. She idolized her father, though she disliked her stepmother. From an early age, she was surrounded by famous writers, philosophers and poets. So, I suppose it was inevitable that she would become a famous writer herself... and perhaps it was also fated that she would fall in love with a writer as well.

In May of 1814, Mary Shelley met and fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In July, they eloped to the Continent. It wasn't until December of 1816, when Percy's first wife committed suicide that Mary and Percy were married. Of the 4 children that Mary Shelley gave birth to, only Percy Florence survived.

Mary Shelley's first and most important work was Frankenstein, which was finished when she was 19-years-old. The story came out of a holiday that Mary and Percy took in Switzerland with Byron. The writers were all talking about the supernatural one night when Byron proposed that they each should write a ghost story. That night, Mary had a waking nightmare, which eventually developed into the story of Frankenstein and his hideous progeny. Mary Shelley spend under a year writing the book and it was published in 1818. Frankenstein is still considered her greatest work.

The Shelley family lived in Italy from 1818 until 1822, when Mary's husband drowned. His boat, Ariel, capsized during a storm. After his death, Mary returned with Percy Florence to London.

Mary Shelley died at the age of 53 from a brain tumor. She is buried in St Peters Churchyard, Bournemouth beside the remains of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Although Frankenstein is the work Mary Shelley is most well-known for, she created other literature as well: Matilda, Valperga, The Last Man, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, Lodore, Falkner, Lives of the Most Eminent Men of France, Rambles in Germany and Italy.

he also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish Percy Shelley's works and for Frankenstein. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements, however. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46) support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories.

Shelley conveys the central themes of romanticism through the complex characterisation of Dr Frankenstein and Captain Walton, as revealed in the extracts. Both Walton and Frankenstein are driven by immense passion, a trait that is typically evident in romantic characters, Walton through his determination to reach the North Pole, and Frankenstein through his ambition of creating life. The similarities between the characters is evident, “I shall satisfy my passionate curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man,” and hence parallels can be drawn in Frankenstein's ambition of creating life, which no-one has ever done before, and Walton's desire to go to the North Pole, again, which no-one has done before. However, where Romantics rejected science and rationalism, Frankenstein constitutes of both these aspects – not only is he extremely passionate in undertaking his project, he also has a vast understanding of science as required for him to fulfil his task. In Shelley's creation of Walton and Frankenstein, she has reflected ideas of their extensive imagination, as a part of the Romantic influence.

15. The expressive theory of art in English poetry of the late 18^th-early 19^th century.

Expressive criticism treats a literary work primarily in relation to the author. It defines poetry as an expression, or overflow, or utterance of feeling, or as the products of poet’s feelings.

The theory tends to judge the work by its sincerity to the poets’ vision or the state of mind. Such views were developed mainly by the Romantic critics and remain current in our time too. Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility” is taken as the ground idea of the expressive theory of art.

The most powerful impetus in expressive critical thought was the Romantic Movement that began in late eighteenth century. This movement has deeply affected our modern consciousness and the common sense discourse of literary commentary. The three key concepts associated with this movement are: imagination, genius and emotion. Expressive theorists firmly stick to these three key terms. They believe that authorial individuality is something to be conveyed by a literary work, and to go beyond objectivist theorists’ prescription that a poet’s effort should be to flee personality and that criticism should focus on the poem not on the poet. Wordsworthian notion that “a poem is inner made outer” puts an emphasis on the poet in a poem, and this emphasis has never eased.

Despite Eliot’s effort to reintroduce the idea that intellect should be equally important for poetry, Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility” remains a common sense and popular attitude. Two Romantic concepts are foreshadowed in Edward Young’s “Conjectures on Original Composition”. Firstly, there was a shift of interest from the work and the reader to the author and his work. Secondly, the emphasis was given more to originality and innate genius than literary rules and conventions. He submits to the opinion that the proper object of imitation is not the ancient author’s work but his ‘spirit’ and his ‘taste’. Thus, Young takes the expressive mode of thinking.

Blake believes that imagination is truly creative and man does not come in the world with Lockean tabularasa. He considers the creative act to be unified, and agrees to some extent with Croce that intuition and expression are similar.