Mary Shelley: Final Thesis

To read the book, click here.

I have found a lot of interpretations for this book that say that this book is a warning against pursuing science with too much ambition, leaving behind religious morality and restriction. This theory fits in very well with the time when the book was written. But we also know that Mary Shelley was an atheist. My reading gave me a different, in fact opposite look at the book. To see why I see Frankenstein as an atheist reading - one that separates morality from religion, read below.

Mary Shelley: The Modern Prometheus

To understand the reference to fire, light, and Prometheus, these links can be useful reading. To read Frankenstein, you can get the book on-line here. To understand why the book's subtitle is so significant to the reading of the tale, read on.

Mary Shelley: The Sublime - Romanticism

To understand this motif, I would recommend reading Frankenstein, a free on-line copy of which can be found here. Mary Shelley wrote at the early stages of a literary movement known as Romanticism. We can see shades of romanticism in her novel, as explored below.

Mary Shelley: Introduction

To get a basic understanding of what this section is all about, please read below.

Tale Share: The Dead are Real

The one question that bothers me a lot is about how real or fictitious historical fiction is. I mean, think about it, if one wanted to talk about historical figures, tell their tales, then why not write biographies? Obviously historical fiction is different, allows the author some agency into the lives of historic entities. But then, what right does one have to change the way someone lived, or died? Perhaps the best way to understand historical fiction is to think of it as set within the realms of history, aligned to the reality of the time, and yet allowing agency to the author to take their characters through the story they have chosen to tell.

A famous personality who has made historical fiction her life, is Hillary Mantel. In 2012, the New Yorker's Larissa MacFaquhar talked about Hillary and the agency of historical fiction. I have quoted a few snippets of this enlightening article below, but for the full article, click on this link.