GCSE Prose Coursework: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
At the time Shelley was writing her novel, "Frankenstein", the world was discovering things daily, so her writings were relevant and justified at that time. Many scientists and explorers of the nineteenth century were conquering new ideas and discovering new-found places of the world, it was a time of intellectual on expressive writing, particularly that of the gothic and horror genre utilising the macabre and bizarre. Such pursuits as Frankenstein's were justified at the time because many people were attempting to make new discoveries in fields of science such as "natural philosophy", physics and the revived field of alchemy.
Shelley's novel was inspired while she was visiting Byron in Switzerland with her husband, Percy, in which they challenged each other to create a horror story. Many people think that this event happened but we cannot be certain, but the account of how Shelly came upon the story adds to the stereotypical image of the genre. After she "retired to rest", after "the witching hour had gone by", she explains she saw "successive images" that led to the creation of the novel, this adds to the conventional view of the genre by using the "witching hour". The use of the witch idea played upon the fears of people at that time as some individuals still suspected those who worked in the field of alchemy. Shelley also refers to "Cornelius Agrippa" throughout the book who himself wrote many volumes on the philosophy of the occult.
Shelley begins her novel in epistolary form, with Walton writing to his sister in London. Frankenstein first meets Walton while he is tracking his "demon" in the Artic; this meeting was relevant at that time because multifarious explorers were trying to reach the North Pole, and many other places, as was Walton. Then, as Walton nurses Frankenstein, he begins his account of how he came to be in the Artic, chasing the "creature".
