Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

The fact that an eighteen-year-old woman wrote one of the most terrifying books in literary history adds to the legend and mystery of the author, Mary Shelly. Mary was born into a creative and well-known family(…..). Her father, William Godwin, was considered a radical and is best known as the author of Enquiry Considering Political Justice (Britton 2). Mary Wollstonecraft, her mother, was known for her work titled Vindication of the Rights of Women (Britton 2). Sadly, Mary was never to know her mother because she died a few days after Mary was born (Britton 2). This left a sad Mary to obsess over her mother’s many books and journals (Britton 2). Her father remarried when Mary was four years old and instead of creating a happy family

Britton declared that “Almost as much literary fascination has been aroused by its genesis as by the novel” (1). Mary’s fascination with death and the regeneration of life are echoed in her dairy, “I dream that my little girl came to life again…I wake and find no baby…I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might, in process of time, renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption” (Britton 4). This dream suggests that the author was thinking about regenerating life even before the event that is credited as being the genesis of

On a holiday visit to Lord Bryon’s home in 1816, Mary had an experience that served as the catalyst for the writing of Frankenstein (Britton 1). One night, Lord Byron had everyone create a frightening story to share with those present (?). The group of participants included her fiancé Percy Shelley. Mary overheard a conversation between Lord Byron and Percy where it was stated that “the basis of life and the hints of reanimation that galvanism had given by producing movement in corpses” (Britton 2-3). Galvanism was a relatively new discovery, in Shelley’s time, that electrical currents make muscles contract and move (source here). During this time, scientific study was making great advancements and many people were afraid that man was attempting to play God (X). The idea of a reanimated human stayed with Mary after she went to bed that night and resulted in a horrifying nightmare in which she saw a specter of a man trying to move and stand up (Britton 3). Britton summaries her recollection of the nightmare as