13. Victorian literature, Shelley, Wilde

- Monster is to some extend everyman figure – asking himself: Who am I, What am I, who made me, why do I feel this way, where am I going

- we all learn emotions (empathy, kindness)

- goes from innocent to brutal killer

- M starting to discover who he is, close to Geneva – comes across young boy in the woods – maybe I can convinced him and he can became my companion – locket – picture of V FR – father of the boy – grabs boy by the neck – comes across housekeeper – give her locket – she is then punished for murder

- to his creator: make me a companion, if you do not – people will be killed by my rage – FR – responsibility to create him a companion – Scotland – Orkney islands – creats female monster – interested in sex and love but never made clear – animating death body he realize – monster is stronger, intelligent than us – will have children – new race – they will eventually replace humanity – THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA – destroy female monster, MONSTER: you took away my only hope, happiness – im going to destoy your wife

MONSTER thinking – perhaps I am fallen angel, goes to V FR wedding night, chokes his “wife”, M wants V FR to be consumed by his thoughts

- FR dies, R W – M cries over FR body – there is nothing left in my life, pain of my sorrow is never going to go away, you should be the last humanity who should see me, I shall make a fire – burn

- circular – created by fire – darkness of nature, lack of knowledge, discovers light – knowledge/inspiration – then steps into the darkness pf nature – destroyed in fire

THEMES

- dangerous of human progress

- nature vs. nurture – he is innocent, why does he become evil? Because he is born that way (genetic) or result of his upbringing – poorest of the poor, lost of the lost

= human behaviour and humans itself – we are a product of our society

- 1993 – two 10 yr killed 2 yr Liverpool – born evil x upbringing (disturbing environment), why are people the way they are, what produces killers

- industrial revolution – new industrial classes – rejected, the poor, crime explosion

• Her mother wrote a feminist book that was encouraging women to think and act for themselves → Mary was also a feminist “I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”

• She was raised only by her father, who was a member of a circle of radical thinkers

  • She was exposed to avantgarde intellectual ideas and it gave her connection to notable person such as Lord Byron

• She met Percy Bysshe Shelley (radical poet-philosopher) and ran away with him for a tour (France, Switzerland) – she escaped her family, he his wife

• Lake poets

  • They had problematic affair, but at the end, it endured, and they got married

  • They had even a literary union – Percy edited her manuscript for Frankenstein – it was published when she was 21 and it became a bestseller

  • Three of their four children died in infancy

  • Percy throwed himself of a cliff and drowned → Mary was left alone as a single mother