Frankenstein [Original 1818 Text]

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

our inner desires to create and control. Frankenstein is a novel about creation. The creation of life. The creation of art. The creation of hate and evil. The story concerns itself not so much with the telling of a tale, as it does with exposing the interior landscapes of the human psyche; the obsessive force that drives humanity forward into what Shelley exposes as a wasteland of evil and pain. Creation is not treated lightly by Shelley. On the contrary, she attacks the very force which drives man to duplicate himself, to take control of the creative process, to “play God,” if you will.