He pleads with the doctor to create a mate for him, and Victor warily agrees. He is profoundly lonely and decides to go to Victor for help. The Creature knows that he is ugly, and he knows that he inspires fear in whoever he meets. He hides in the shadows and listens to their conversations, and he also finds a sack of abandoned books in the woods which he uses to teach himself to read.

He is extremely intelligent and well-spoken, thanks to a poor family that he lives among for months without them knowing. Much of the novel is dedicated to The Creature’s narrative. What I will say is this: Frankenstein has been told and retold since its publication, but one thing that is certain, is that the original novel is not so much about fear or horror or monsters, but what happens when a living thing becomes lonely. Frankenstein, and his creature (aptly named The Creature) turns against him. I won’t get too into the specifics if you haven’t read it yet, but things don’t go as planned for Dr. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, the book tells the tale of Doctor Victor Frankenstein and his quest to build a human. It’s a fairly short novel, coming in at just under 300 pages, and I got through it very quickly. In Romantic Outlaws, I learned a lot more about how Frankenstein came to be, and I decided it was finally time that I read it. Godwin and Wollstonecraft were celebrities in their circle, and they were both widely admired. From the moment she was born, great pressure was put on her to become an intellectual like her parents.

Shelley was born Mary Godwin to Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, an English philosopher. Inside, she argues that the only reason women are considered inferior to men is that they are not educated in the same way. If you’re unfamiliar with her, Wollstonecraft wrote one of the earliest feminist manifestos, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. When I discovered that Shelley was Wollstonecraft’s daughter, I was immediately starstruck. It is an excellent resource for learning more about Shelley, and her feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft. I very quickly fell under the spell of Shelley’s writing and proceeded to become really interested in her.īefore I read Frankenstein, I read another great book called Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. And, as usual, the book completely blew any other version of the tale out of the water. I, like nearly everyone in the world, had obviously heard the story of Frankenstein many times before reading the book. I chalk this up to the fact that I didn't really start actually studying literature until 2018 when I started my Master’s degree. I love classics, but there are several that I have only recently read, or haven’t even read at all (yet). I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the first time I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was just last year.