An Admired Ghost Story

This week in my AP Literature class, we began to read Frankenstein. No it's not the tall, green, and dumb monster who eats people and scares the heck out of children. On the contrary, Frankenstein is a story about Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who is the creator of an unnamed, hideous, sapient creature. Mary Shelley, the author, wrote Frankenstein because of a nightmare she had one night, which then became a ghost story. She began writing the novel when she was 18 and published the it anonymously. Mary Shelley is recognized as a romantic writer. Romantics were seen as the "hippies" of their period. Romantics believed they were guided by their human passions, rather than science explained in the Age of Reason. These writers were a counterculture to the Age of Reason,
or The Enlightenment.

Mary Shelley's mother was a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary was a feminist and fought for woman's rights. She also was an advocate for woman's right to vote. Mary died giving birth to her daughter, Mary Shelley. Therefore, Shelley grew up with only her father. Her father's friends were extremely famous and intelligent. Shelley was always around them. One of her father's friends, Percy Bysshe Shelley married Mary. Later on he passed away. Shelley must have been inspired to write this novel due to there being constant deaths of loved ones in her life.