Frankenstein / Stage 4 - B1

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Victor Frankenstein is an ambitious and talented scientist. Since childhood, he desires to learn the secrets of nature. As a result, his eagerness leads him to the greatest discovery of all time. This unprecedented discovery gives him the opportunity of creating a living creature with his own hands. Scared by its ugliness, Frankenstein runs away and leaves his creature to his fate. The scientist repents of his wrong action and tries to forget the events of the horrible night when he had created the monster.

The creature tries to survive in an unjust world. The creature turns out to be a reasonable being, who can think, feel, rejoice, and suffer greatly. He kills Frankenstein’s family and friends to get revenge. After a while, he asks him to create a companion for him, but Frankenstein refuses to create one more cruel monster. Since that time, a fight to the death between creature and its creator begins inevitably. Who will win at the end? The monster, devoid of happiness and friendship, or its creator who had lost everything in his life?

96 pages, Paperback

Published August 21, 2017

About the author

Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published.

The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression.

The eclipse of Mary Shelley's reputation as a novelist and biographer meant that, until the last thirty years, most of her works remained out of print, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. She was seen as a one-novel author, if that. In recent decades, however, the republication of almost all her writings has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her voracious reading habits and intensive study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's recognition of herself as an author has also been recognized; after Percy's death, she wrote about her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea". Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.

Reviews

[Tuğkan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a nice book for English learners.