Victor Frankenstein's Youngest Brother example essay topic

Frankenstein: An Author's Tragedies From the very start of Mary Shelley's life, her experiences influenced the writing of her 1831 novel, Frankenstein. The book is born from a young woman's maternal anxieties (Mellor 50). These feelings presumably originated from the death of her mother during childbirth. This and other tragedies of Mary's life are continually portrayed through her most famous work, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. One of the most difficult aspects of Mary Shelley's life is the frequent death that seems to follow her. The main character Victor Frankenstein is faced with the loss of his younger brother, William, the accused, Justine Moritz, his best friend, Henry Clerval, and his wife, Elizabeth Lavenza.

Like Victor, Mary loses her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, her first daughter, her half-sister, Fanny Imlay Godwin, her daughter, Clara, and her son, William. She is also fascinated with graveyards, specifically the site of her mother's grave at Saint Pancras Churchyard, "where she read her mother's works and sought solace from nature and her mother's spirit" (Mellor 20). In the novel, Victor spent a lot of his time in graveyards conducting research, "I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses" (Shelley 36-37). Her difficult family life is also expressed through the words of her novel. With the absence of her real mother, Mary could turn only to her malicious stepmother for motherly affection. She opened and read her mail and insisted that Mary perform household chores.

She also discouraged her passion for reading and denied her formal education (Mellor 8). William Godwin, Mary's father, "had deliberately distanced himself from his daughter" and felt that she "disrupted domestic harmony in the Godwin household" (Mellor 13). Despite Mary's admiration for her father, he sent her to live with William Baxter in Scotland (Mellor 15). Like the hideous creature in Frankenstein, she lacked and longed for caring and supportive parents. There are several traits seen in the characters in Frankenstein that mirror the mannerisms of people in Mary's life. Her husband, Percy Bys she Shelley, while in college fancied "ancient books of Chemistry and Magic" (Mellor 18).

Victor Frankenstein was captivated by the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus (Shelley 26). At the opening of chapter four, Frankenstein states: From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the lectures, and cultivated the acquaintance, of the men of science of the university. (35) The character, William, Victor Frankenstein's youngest brother, could have been modeled after Mary's favored half-brother, William Godwin II. But more likely it was meant to be her son, William Shelley who shared the same features as the description.

Eerily William died after the publication of Frankenstein (Mellor 47). Another character, Victor Frankenstein's father, seemed to represent Mary's father, William Godwin, whose "youth had come late" (St. Clair 260). Alphonse Frankenstein was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and a father of a family. (Shelley 17) Mary Shelley had a great passion for literature and read the same pieces as her monster. In Frankenstein, the monster benefits from several writings, "Goethe's Weather, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Romans, Volney's Ruins or, ... the Revolutions of Empire, and Milton's Paradise Lost, as well as the poets the creature occasionally quotes (Mellor 45).

Mary's love for the romantic poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron is aesthetically incorporated into her novel. Her respect for the beauty of the earth is shown through her vivid descriptions of the scenery and Henry Clerval's optimism in chapter eighteen. He was alive to every new scene, joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise and recommence a new day. He pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape and the appearances of the sky. "This is what it is to live", he cried. (Shelley 139) Mary never forgot the excitement of hearing Coleridge theatrically recite "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in her home as a child (Mellor 11).

She used the same method of storytelling in her novel, as Victor Frankenstein related his life to the enticed sailor. Mary's many relocations and exotic excursions with her husband, Percy and sister, Claire Clairmont contributed to the excessive travels of Victor Frankenstein in the novel. According to Leonard Wolf, in The Annotated Frankenstein, almost every location mentioned in the book pertains to a place she has visited. For example, Colony, where Victor and Elizabeth spend their wedding night, was very close to the house the Shelley's rented in the summer of 1816 (Wolf 284). In addition, Frankenstein and Clerval enjoyed the wonderful history of Oxford (Shelley 145).

The city "played a significant role in Percy Shelley's life" (Wolf 234). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein clearly depicts every aspect of her life from her never-ending sorrow, to her taste in books, to her favorite vacation spot. Her novel and her life have been a part of the world's history for centuries, and will carry through for centuries to come.

Bibliography

Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen Inc., 1988.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
St. Clair, William. The Godwin and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
Wolf, Leonard, ed. The Annotated Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. 1818.
New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. /Publishers, 1977.