Frankenstein. Chapter 5 is a very important chapter, because this is when the monster comes to life. The atmosphere is very ominous:

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in London. Her mother died of fever, ten days after giving birth to her. Similarly to Shelley’s novel, ‘Frankenstein‘ which deals with the theme of death and the horror of giving birth. Her father William Godwin was a writer and political journalist who became famous with his work “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’’ in 1793. Shelley herself, suggest some very political and moralistic messages within her novel. She appears to be a political thinker. She knew that advances in science were happening during the Victorian period and possibly she recognised the dangers that lay on the horizon. She probably had a feeling about the science going too far as years will go by. Man making another man from dead tissue could as we might expect destroy the family unit. A child needs a parent to deal with emotions and the environment they’re born in. This moralistic message is shown in ‘Frankenstein’.

Shelley met her husband Percy at the end of 1812 and they married at 1816. Their first daughter died in Venice, Italy a few years later. After that her second child died at the age of three. Shelley shows an interest in creating or re-creating life in her novel ‘Frankenstein’. Maybe this is because she had experienced so much loss in her life and at the same time watched others experience loss. The Victorian period would have been difficult for many, especially the working class. Medicine and other health facilities were not cheap or free available as they are in these days Shelley may have fantasised over the idea of bringing her mother back to life. However, we can assume that Shelley is morally against creating or re-creating life. In her novel ‘Frankenstein’, her main message could be that humans should not play god, because only God can give and take life.

During the nineteenth century when Shelley lived, men and women were not equal to each other. A man’s job consisted of studying science, whereas women had to household duties. Basically Shelley wanted to show women are not totally useless. She started the novel ‘Frankenstein’ in the summer of 1816, when she was joined with Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont. She undertook a challenge, set by Lord Byron, to write a ghost story. This is one of the reasons why she wrote the novel ‘Frankenstein’. Shelley is a role model for many women. She used her talent to demonstrate some of the concerns she perhaps had with the society in which she lived in. Cleverly, Shelley used the gothic genre to convey her concerns – as she knew the gothic genre was highly popular during this period.

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Furthermore, during the nineteenth century scientists were discussing the possibility of bringing the dead back to life. However people were very religious back then and they believed that scientists should not undergo God’s job. The novel has been written for almost a hundred years, and it is still very popular today. People today try all sort of things like cloning and designer babies. I think that there are still a lot of people who share the same idea as Shelley. I personally think that it is very wrong to create life, because if we go on doing these kinds of ...

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