Frankenstein: An Insight to the Life of Mary Shelley.
She grew up not having her real mother around, because she died a short while after giving birth to Mary. Throughout her life she lost many people that were close to her. She lost four children to either death or miscarriage, and she lost her husband, father, and stepsister to different tragedies throughout her life (Shelley 333-34). Mary Shelley ended up learning most of the things she knew about her mother through reading her mothers" writings. She also read many criticisms of her mother's work (Gilbert and Gubar 227).
In many ways, Mary Shelley wrote the events of her life into Frankenstein. One example of this is how the Monster that Victor created learns all about his creator and the world around him through the books he finds in Victor's lab coat. Another example of Mary Shelley's life being in her work is the way Victor creating the Monster can be seen as a symbol to giving birth to a child. During the time that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she was almost continually pregnant.
In Frankenstein, the Monster finally catches up with Victor and begins to tell him the story of how he learned to read and speak. He first tells him of the family he watched when he was living in the woods, and how he learned to read because of his intense observation of them (Shelley 79). He also tells him about how he read Victor's lab notes and Paradise Lost. This is the only way that the Monster has any knowledge of Victor or how he came to be created. Through these lab notes he is horrified at what he is made of. As the Monster told Victor, "I sickened as I read. "Hateful day when I received life!" I exclaimed in agony" (Shelley 88). Mary Shelley learned almost all she knew about her mother from reading her mothers" works. Gilbert and Gubar state that knowing her mother died in giving birth to her, Mary Shelley must have had "a strangely intimate relationship between her feelings toward her dead mother [.