Frankenstein

1462 Words3 Pages

Every artist draws inspiration from somewhere, and the inspiration shows in their work. When looking deeper into the life of Mary Shelley, it is easy to say that the inspiration she drew to create her novel Frankenstein, came from her own personal experiences. Frankenstein is riddled parallels to Marry Shelley’s own life. It was not just by mere coincidences either, Mary Shelley makes various references to family members (specifically by name), places she visited, and situations she faced, herself, all of these experiences are documented in her novel Frankenstein.

Beginning with the names of some of the characters is Frankenstein; Mary Shelley drew inspiration from her own life to give the characters in Frankenstein their rightful names, beginning with the most important character, Victor Frankenstein. Victor was an alias Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley’s husband, assumed in his early life (Badalamenti 428). Badalamenti also stated “Percy saw his father has tyrannical”, and chose the name Victor “to feel triumph over him” (428). Just as Percy was trying to surpass his father, Victor was trying to surpass nature and create a new species.

Victor isn’t the only name from Frankenstein that came from Mary Shelley’s family, Elizabeth, William and the initials of MWS all have significant meanings in Shelley’s life. In Mary Shelley’s real life, Elizabeth was Percy’s favorite sister (Baldick 36), in Frankenstein Elizabeth was the name of Victor Frankenstein’s sister, and also his wife later on in the novel. And together the two, Percy and Elizabeth, were family favorites just as Elizabeth and Victor were also (Badalamenti 426). William, as one may remember is the younger brother of Victor who the monster killed in the beginning chapters o...

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...he monster, might be a symbol of Mary Shelley’s dead daughter. Going through a traumatic experience like that is sure to leave some scars that writing can help heal. For example, Victor does this experiment to “renew death” (Shelley, Frankenstein 32), to resurrect dead bits and pieces of bodies (what the monster is made out of) to create life from something already dead. Resurrection, which was something Mary Shelley dreamed of doing to her deceased daughter, literally, as seen in The Journals Of Mary Shelley with this short excerpt “Dream that my little baby came to life again” (70) it said. She also went on about it, showing that the thoughts of her deceased daughter did in fact plague her mind a whole lot “that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it by the fire & it lived –I wake and find no baby- I think about the little thing all day –not in good spirits”.

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