THE AUTHOR

Mary Shelley was born on 30 August 1797 and was an important ure in the Romantic Era of English Literature. Her mother was a famous feminist, her father a philosopher and novelist. She also married a poet. She realized the idea of Frankenstein when she was at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron and her next husband.

She wrote the novel after a series of calamities in her life: the worst were the suicides of her sister and Shelly's wife. After the suicides, Mary and Shelley married. They went to live in Italy, where their two children died, so she never fully recovered from this trauma.

When Mary was only twenty-four her husband died, too. Poverty forced her to live in England, a country she hated because of its social system.

Mary Shelley died in 1851 of a brain tumor.

DATE OF PUBLICATION

Frankenstein was published for the first time in 1818.

THE STORY

Robert Walton, the captain of a ship, recounts his adventures through a series of letters to his sister in England. Walton meets Victor Frankenstein in the seas near the North Pole. Frankenstein tells him his story, beginning from his early life: his chemical studies at the university and his destre to know the secret of life. He steals old body parts from a cemetery and create a new monstrous body. Finally he gives it life. However, the creature appears so horrible that he runs away, allowing the creature to escape. He doesn't have any news from the monster, until his little brother is killed by him. His people doesn't know anything and accuse and execute a family friend.

One day while Victor is alone in the mountains, the monster appears to him, tells his story, and begs his creator to make him another creature a female. Victor refuses, but finally he's convinced by the monster's menaces. He leaves on a journey for England to organize his creation on an island. One night, the monster appears at his window and he becomes conscious of the fool project he's going to realize, so destroys the new creation. The monster becomes a fury and promises that he will be with Victor on his wedding night. Shortly after his return, Victor marries his loved cousin Elizabeth. Victor is afraid: he thinks that he will be murdered on his wedding night, so he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. But when he hears Elizabeth scream realizes that the monster has killed his wife and promises to dedicate the rest of his life to finding the monster and realizing his revenge.

At this point in the story, Frankenstein and Walton meet. Victor, already ill, worsens and dies. Walton returns to the room where Victor's body is and sees the monster, who describes to him his suffering. Now that his creator has died, he can also end his suffering. He leaves for the mountains to die.

PLACE & TIME

The letters that tell us the story are written in a period of nine months, but they narrate a story that comprehends the whole life of a man, Victor Frankenstein. Even if we don't know the exact years, we know that all the story is situated in XVIII century.

These letters are written from all over the Europe: Petersburg, Archangel . but the story is situated in Switzerland, Great Britain and also in the North Pole.

MY NOTES ABOUT THE BOOK

It's a good book and I really enjoyed myself reading it. Mary Shelley tells us that we can't control nature, that we're not God, and I liked this new vision of the eternal ht between Good and Evil. In this new version, it's more difficult to find the real good one and the evil one. If you think about the monster, you see that he only doesn't want to be alone, and that's why he's evil . and if you interpretate the novel like this it's hard to answer the question: "Who's the evil one?"