The Controversial Issues of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

The Controversial Issues of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

‘Frankenstein’ is a Gothic Horror novel written by Mary Shelley. An

ambitious scientist, Victor Frankenstein, creates a creature from

Human body parts in secret. Instead of taking responsibility for the

creature he abandons it. The creature spends its life learning about

Humans, learning to read and trying to find Frankenstein. Finally, it

takes revenge on Frankenstein and his family because he abandons it.

The controversial issues are: Scientific research-thinking about the

consequences of a ‘breakthrough’ like creating life, Frankenstein’s

obsession which shuts him off from friends and family, Frankenstein’s

responsibility for what he has done and the dangers of knowledge which

Frankenstein found out about , and so he warns Captain Walton about

them.

Shelley was a radical thinker, much like Victor Frankenstein in the

novel. When she was 16 she met Percy Shelley, and in the summer of

1816 she was staying with him and Lord Byron on the shores of Lake

Geneva. She would later on become the wife of Percy Shelley. One

evening Byron suggested that they should all write a ghost story to

see whose was best. Much like her childhood, Mary Shelley had a dream

about the story she should write. In chapter five in the novel,

Victor Frankenstein has a dream which turns into a nightmare, like the

dream Shelley had to write Frankenstein. Her husband encouraged her to

further her ideas and in 1818 Frankenstein was first published.

At the time that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, many scientists were

experimenting with the idea of bringing dead humans and animals, back

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...clude Clerval his best friend, Elizabeth his

wife and William his son. His servant Justine also died as a

consequence of William’s murder, through the means of Frankenstein’s

creature framing her as the murderess and her being executed for it.

There is one more death. The creature promises to kill itself so that

‘’no curious and unhallowed wretch’’ can create ‘’such another that I

have been’’ But there is an open ending so the reader is left in

suspense and there is no idea what has happened to the creature, so it

still haunts. The only clue that you are given about the creatures

whereabouts is the last sentence in the novel, ‘’He was soon borne

away by the waves and lost in distance and darkness.’’ The ending of

the novel is controversial because it makes you think that the

creature can come back and haunt again.