Autobiographical Characteristics and Motherhood
Mary Shelley was living a very tragic life during the time she was writing Frankenstein. Shelley coped with the loss of her mother and the distance her father had created between the two of them. Many speculate that Shelley had a hard time coping with these tragedies and channeled them into her writings. Frankenstein may be shaped by Shelley’s fears and life experiences regarding maternity, birth, guilt and revenge.
During the time Shelly was creating Frankenstein she was also trying to get pregnant. She was not successful right away and she has several miscarriages. This was an emotional time for Shelley because of her birthing troubles. D’Amato Suggests that Shelley was experiencing these emotions as other mothers do and turned them into the central motive for Dr. Frankenstein in her book. In the novel Frankenstein creates a monster and D’Amato says that “Giving birth to a monster is…show more content… Wollstonecraft was an inspiration to Shelley to write and Wollstonecraft’s death brought upon many sad feelings for Shelley. D’Amato believes that Shelley used her unconscious feelings for her mother to influence her writing for Frankenstein. Furthermore, it is believed that Shelley held herself responsible for her mother’s death and the death of the babies she miscarried. With this guilt it is possible that Shelley wrote Frankenstein to explore ideas of death or the creation of life out of death. Also how she wanted to both protect and warn against the creation of life with its’ many dangers. The same guilt from her mother may have been projected onto Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s conflicted character, “Mary’s manipulation of Victor from killer to prey highlights a deep-seated ambivalence and doubt regarding Victor’s/Mary’s true self. This transformation suggests Mary’s own uncertainty as to whether she was a victim or a murderer” (D’Amato
