Frankenstein

	Frankenstein timeline	Mary Shelley biography
	The context of Frankenstein	Synopsis and commentary section
	Characters in the novel	What makes a good Frankenstein exam answer?

Text used in this guide

This study guide is based on the 1818 first edition of Frankenstein, rather than Mary Shelley’s revised and rather different version, published in 1831. An explanation for this choice can be found elsewhere in this guide. (See Critical analysis: Revision 1831).

About Frankenstein

The story of Frankenstein is well-known all over the world. Although it was the original invention of Mary Shelley, since its publication in 1819 it has been told and re-told in many different genres, including:

• Comic books
• Plays
• Radio serials
• Television programmes
• Feature films.

The fact that its author was a young woman of barely twenty, who had eloped with one of the leading poets of his age, has added to the interest of the novel.

This tale of a scientist who creates a being out of the parts of dead bodies and brings it to life has acquired an almost mythical status and has been used for all kinds of purposes:

• To provide images of terror at the prospect of a semi-human monster at large in the world
• To sound a warning about the dangers of scientific experimentation. Frankenstein is often mentioned in discussions of such contemporary controversies as genetic engineering
• In everyday life as a means of describing anything – from an unruly committee to a rampant garden – that is created and then slips out of the control of its creator.

Before you read Frankenstein

In very many cases, people talk about ‘a Frankenstein monster’ without having read the novel, or perhaps even knowing of its existence. They may have seen one of the many Frankenstein films or simply picked up the phrase from their reading or in conversation.

It may be that this is the situation you are in as you begin work on the novel. If so, before you begin to read Frankenstein, you might ask yourself some questions concerning your expectations of what the book will contain.

Now start reading the novel and find out whether it fits your assumptions and expectations!

About this study guide

The aim of this guide is to enhance and support your reading. It hopes to:

• Increase your enjoyment of the novel
• Extend your knowledge and understanding of its content
• Extend your knowledge and understanding of the context in which it was conceived, written and published
• Extend your knowledge and understanding of the ways in which it may be interpreted.

These aims aren’t always easy to separate, so you will find that the guide offers you many opportunities to move between its various sections as you pursue a particular reference or theme. Literary texts aren’t like Frankenstein’s monster, assembled out of various parts with visible joins: they are organic wholes, so it is important that you should realise that topics such as themes, symbols and structure only fully make sense if they are considered together rather than separately.

Using the guide

Websites aren’t like books, beginning at page 1 and ending on last page: they are flexible and enable you to move around as you choose. Nonetheless, you may find it helpful to have some guidance on the order in which this guide has been constructed, and how you might find it most helpful to use it.

1. A good place to start would be with the Author section, which contains information about the author’s life and the circumstances in which the book was written.

2. Then, as you work through the text, you will find it best to refer to the

Synopses section, which offers much more than the title suggests:

• A summary of the text – which, by the way, is intended as a reminder, and not as a substitute for reading the novel!
• An explanation of any words, phrases or references you might find difficult or obscure
• Many cross-references to other parts of the guide
• Various task and exercices allowing you work further on the text on your own behalf.

3. From this section, you will have been referred to the other parts of the

Contexts section:

• Social/political: which indicates some of the key issues of the period during which Frankenstein was written and first published
• Religious/philosophical: which looks at the implications of the novel for these important issues, including scientific: a context that is especially relevant to Frankenstein, because its central character is a scientist and the plot is driven by his experiments
• Literary: which enables you to understand how the novel relates to other literary work being produced in the same period.

4. There are also a number of sections devoted to the literary dimensions of the novel:

• Narrative
• Characterisation
• Themes and significant ideas
• Imagery and symbolism
• Structure.

These sections are frequently cross-referenced, both from the Synopses section and between one another.

5. The section on Critical analysis is divided into two main parts:

• Reception, which deals with how the novel was reviewed when it was first published
• Recent critical approaches, which looks at the different ways in which the book has been read over the past twenty or thirty years.

6. The section on Approaching essays and exams offers:

• General advice on how to deal with these means of testing your knowledge and understanding of the novel
• Specimen essays and exam questions
• An example of textual analysis.

7. The remaining section, Resources, offers advice on:

• Books, articles and websites you could use if you want to undertake further reading about the novel and its author, in
• A section listing Frankenstein on film, as the book has frequently been adapted for other media. This includes further tasks and exercices for those who are interested.