Frankenstein · GCSE English Literature

Plot

The story is framed by Captain Robert Walton's letters to his sister during a voyage to the Arctic, where he rescues Victor Frankenstein.
Victor, from Geneva, studies science at Ingolstadt and discovers how to give life to dead matter. He builds a creature, but is horrified by it and runs away.
The creature is rejected by everyone. Victor's young brother William is murdered, and the servant Justine is wrongly executed for the crime.
The creature tells his story: he learned to speak and read by secretly watching the De Lacey family, but they drove him away. Lonely and rejected, he turned to revenge. He asks Victor to make him a female companion.
Victor starts the female, then destroys her. The creature kills Victor's friend Henry Clerval, then Victor's wife Elizabeth on their wedding night. Victor chases the creature to the Arctic and dies on Walton's ship. The creature mourns him and says he will end his own life.

Dangerous knowledge and ambition, creation and responsibility, isolation and loneliness, nature and nurture, revenge, and the power of nature.

Mary Shelley began the novel in 1816, during a ghost-story contest at Lake Geneva, and published it in 1818. Its subtitle, 'The Modern Prometheus', refers to the myth of Prometheus, punished for giving fire to humans.
It reflects Romanticism (the power of nature and emotion, and a warning against cold reason) and new science such as galvanism, using electricity to make dead muscles twitch.
Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a famous writer on women's rights who died soon after Mary was born.

'I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created' and 'Learn from me… how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge' (Victor).
'I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel' and 'I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend' (the creature).
'Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful' and 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night' (the creature).

Frame narrative: A story told within another story.
Gothic: A style of fiction with horror, mystery and extreme emotions.
Romanticism: A movement that valued nature, emotion and imagination.
Galvanism: Using electricity to make muscles move.
Prometheus: In Greek myth, a figure punished for giving fire to humans.
Epistolary: Told through letters.
Nature and nurture: The debate over whether character comes from birth or upbringing.