| Mary Woilstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an important literary figure in the nineteenth-century British Romanticism. Compared to her contemporary writers, Mary Shelley had a more singular family background. She was the only daughter of William Godwin, a leading reformer and radical philosopher of that time, and Mary Woilstonecraft, a radical feminist famed as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In addition, she was the second wife of the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Since her infancy Mary Shelley had benefited a lot from her father; she was not only acquainted with William Wordsworth, Samuel T. Coleridge and other Romantic literary writers such as Charles and Mary Lamb, but also encouraged to read and write under her father's guidance. Under such conditions, Mary Shelley, at the age of eighteen, wrote her first and the most famous novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.Though critically a failure in the first few years after its publication in 1818, Frankenstein has never been out of print and has been translated into many languages. The novel, besides its various stylistic forms, contains a vast amount of knowledge in all fields of study including literature, science, education, and mythology, which encompass the important issues of her day. The central narrative of the novel recounts the tragedy of a well-educated Swiss scholar, Victor Frankenstein, and exposes insightfully the potential dangers of excessive pursuit of individuality. Frankenstein, driven by an insatiable desire for knowledge, discovers the secret of animating lifeless matterand by assembling body parts he realizes his dream of creating life. Yet Frankenstein is horrified by the monstrosity of his own creation, and flees from his laboratory in terror and loathing. Consequently, his irresponsible rejection brings about the hideous monster's revenges on all his family members, his closest friends and finally himself.This thesis is intended for a systematic study of Mary Shelley's early life, her rational Romantic ideas, and her artistic features incorporated in her masterpiece, Frankenstein. In addition to introduction and conclusion, this thesis consists of five chapters.Introduction focuses on the marginalized status of Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein in literary tradition and clarifies the intentions of writing this thesis. It gives additionally a concise introduction of five major aspects or approaches enclosed in this thesis.Chapter One is devoted to a brief account of Mary Shelley's early life and explores the objective factors that cause her writing of Frankenstein in 1816 from a biographical perspective.Chapter Two is contributed to a detailed comparative study of the major variations between the 1818 and the 1831 editions of Frankenstein. The revisions Mary Shelley makes in the 1831 edition embody the maturity of her literary creation and the impressive changes of Mary Shelley's attitudes toward human life especially the fate of the individual.Chapter Three gives a detailed account of Mary Shelley's life in its specific historical context, and deals synchronically with the chief influences of British Romanticism and Gothic tradition on Mary Shelley's literary pursuit.Chapter Four aims at analyzing Mary Shelley's Romantic concerns and the Gothic elements embodied in Frankenstein. Mary Shelley stresses the importance of the individual self-expression in her novel, her real motive, however, is to provoke a rational attitudetowards Romanticism among its readers through her depiction of the horrible consequences of excessive individual pursuit. Besides, it traces the Gothic tradition and its unique artistic style, and explicates the Gothic elements in Frankenstein. In order to achieve her aesthetic intention-to stir senses of pity and fear among the readers, Mary Shelley applies successfully many distinctive skills of the Gothic style to her novel writing.Chapter Five stresses Mary Shelley's artistic style through a textual examination of her narrative strategies in Fra... |
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