Frankenstein's Marxist Analysis

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Every literary work is a reflection of the context surrounding it, including historical, social, and economic context (Rivkin 644). For this reason, it is pivotal to examine the context surrounding the text before delving into analysis. Frankenstein was first published in 1816. Its author, Mary Shelley, was the daughter of two radical philosophers: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (Smith 7). While this biographical information may seem irrelevant, it is important in this case precisely because the radical ideas of her parents may give us an idea of the author’s own opinions on the historical events surrounding the setting for her novel. As Warren Montag argues, the novel itself is set in the 1790’s, approximately one hundred and fifty years after the 1642 Revolution in England, which is mentioned in the text (385). Thus, the work itself alludes to revolution and is placed during a revolutionary time. In fact, there were two revolutions going on at this time: the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution. The main historical event during the 1790’s was the French Revolution. This idealistic revolution had as its main goal to establish a social order based on reason and justice and had many supporters even in Britain at the time, including Shelley’s parents. Her father even wrote a work in support of the revolution, which would eventually be censored after the British government declared war on France in 1793 and began to prosecute supporters of French revolutionaries (Smith 8). It is logical, then, that Shelley would mention the English revolution in place of the French revolution so as to avoid censorship by her eliciting sympathy for an oppressed monster in her story. The Haitian Revolution also took place in the 1790’s. This revolution for Haitian independence began as a slave revolt and, once the slaves in Haiti defeated Napoleon’s army,
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