In what ways does Mary Shelley make you sympathise with the monster in 'Frankenstein'?

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In what ways does Mary Shelley make you sympathise with the monster in ‘Frankenstein’?

    In 1797 Mary Shelley was born. She was the daughter of two radical figures in a fast-changing world.

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, or ‘The Modern Prometheus’ lived in a strange and ever changing world. She grew up and lived surrounded by many radical people, which gave her, I suspect, some of the inspiration for her most famous novel. Polidori for example wrote ‘The Vampyre’ in 1819.  She tasted independence early, but even though she lived in London, the centre of political radicalism, she spent a lot of time away in Scotland with friends. Here she developed the creative side to herself, where she became the ‘creative, wilful heroine’. There are also some other factors that could have affected Shelley around the time she wrote Frankenstein.

   One of these factors could have been Science. At the time there were many ‘discoveries’ being made in science. Shelley along with many people with fascinated by the discoveries being made at the time, but she also was acutely aware ‘Of the inherent dangers of the scientific quest which could so easily sacrifice humane means, perhaps humanity itself, in the quest for knowledge and power.’ This is shown in Frankenstein’s ambition to create another being, even at his death: -

 ‘I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed’.

    The Legend of Frankenstein started in a large villa in Italy. Lord Byron, the entertaining host that he was, suggested to his three guests (Shelley, Percy Shelley and Polidori, Byrons’ Physician) that they should tell ghost stories to scare each other. Shelley tried hard, but for many nights she could think of no story, until one night, in a dream, it came to her: -

 ‘I saw … the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show some signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.’

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   This horrifying image was the base for the whole novel. Her husband immediately encouraged her to try and continue the story, and thus Frankenstein was born.    

    Despite the many immoral and wicked acts the monster commits, we can sympathise with him at several points during the novel. Although the monster perpetrates many ‘unforgivable’ crimes, we find a need to sympathise with him, because what he has already suffered in his short life. Most of the evil acts the monster perpetrates are in revenge for his suffering, or are completely accidental, like for example the death ...

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