Mary Wollstonecraft Influence On Frankenstein

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Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft, in the summer of 1816, wrote the novel Frankenstein. She then published it anonymously, and allowed her husband to write the Preface (Wollstonecraft, 1-16). Later she accredits those latter two facts to her youth and distress over owning the spotlight (Wollstonecraft Shelley 1-3). There are reasons she doesn’t, reasons she shares with her mother of literary fame (Biography), and she hides the reasons in plain sight in her horrifying tale. Her heartbreaking story is one of a misbegotten creature that has no sense of belonging, no companions, not even the love and companionship of his creator. The doppelganger of an unloving creator, this monster is hated by the very man who created him. Victor Frankenstein, the selfish creator of a monstrosity to himself and others, turns his back to him without any remorse, believing him as hideous as the parts he…show more content…
As Elizabeth, hardly more than a servant herself (Shelley 1-166) rids herself of any guilt at Justine’s lot in life; it is easy to hear the echoes of society’s self-redeeming description of the ills it champions. Better to be a slave here than elsewhere, a thought pattern used often to keep mutiny down, is a pattern we see with each of the women’s plights. Looks, passiveness and an obedient demeanor are the only reasons given that they have any status at all (Shelley 1-166). “Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” (Shelley 102). Even the monster is aware of the cruelty dealt to most, one that is learned from others, not born into us all. Created of selfishness and egomaniacal desires, the creation doesn’t inherit these destructive forces, but learns them from those who call themselves just and good (Shelley

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