Early Life

Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was the daughter of William Godwin, philosopher/writer, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist and also the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). During Shelley’s time, education was uncommon for women, but thanks to her parent’s status she was able to educate herself.

How does her life connect to Frankenstein?

Frankenstein draws on a few connections between Shelley and the time that she grew up, the first being the role of women in society. In a world where women did not have much of a voice, she grew up without the most important role model she needed due to her mother’s passing shortly after birth. The roles of the women in the book are portrayed as passive and very submissive. The character that portrays this the most is Justine, the maid of the Frankenstein house. When the monster framed her for the murder of Victor’s younger brother, she just accepted her fate in court because she did not believe her voice mattered. The next connection is death and the meaning of life. Unfortunately,  the death of her mother is just the beginning of Shelley’s experience with death. In the time before her marriage, Shelley lost her first child in 1815, and later that year her half-sister committed suicide. After marriage, she gave birth to three more children, and sadly, only her son, Percy Florence, lived to adulthood. In addition, her husband also drowned while sailing The Gulf of Spezia. With such familiarity with death, we can see where the ideas of Victor’s curiosity about the meaning of life originated.

Other books include: