Frankenstein written in the early 1800s written by a teenage girl - Mary Shelley We already have THREE things in our heads All the Frankenstein stuff we know from POPULAR CULTURE green - awful haircut life imbued by lightning into the body - bolts on the neck Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster the monster is superhuman - super powers, literally very famous “look” of Frankenstein’s monster comes from the 1931 Universal Studios horror masterpiece (directed by James Whale) starring Boris Karloff - one of the first horror movies ever made - and it was a serious picture the monster is a sympathetic character - he is a tragic, haunted, lonely, angry outsider the producer of this movie was Carl Laemmle, the heavily-accented Jewish founder of Universal Studios (another outsider) Written by a teenager - outsiders again? YES the teenage mind is a little bit different from an adult mind - it’s not done yet the teenager might be a little more dramatic or tragic or haunted or emotional in general - this can come out in the book - and the character(s) can reflect the writer’s concerns in life the writer is also a female - another outsider - male culture isn’t (at this time) accepting of women as equals - a female trying to write and be an artist and be taken seriously would have a hard time female view of relationships? - man is a monster? young woman who will probably have a baby would have some issues that would come up in the book - the idea of literally creating life and being a mother and dealing with all the issues that come from that, is a very strange idea - CRAZY
 Early 1800s - What about that time period? Napoleonic Wars - time of chaos in Europe - turmoil in politics the year of no summer - there was a volcano that put up enough ask to block the sun and kill the summer for a year - crop failure, etc. what kind of technology was there? Pre-Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution is the early to late 1800s where factories became machine-driven inventions allowed for mass-production and speedier construction of almost everything switching from handmade world to a mass-produced world This novel comes loaded with ideas and possibilities to consider that we bring into it. The Age of Reason What beliefs used to rule the Western world? Religion - Christianity - Catholicism Politics was still largely focused on single leaders - a King, a Queen, A Warlord, etc until the 1700s or so. Thinkers in the 1700s started coming up with some new ideas - these ideas ran parallel with science starting up It seemed to these thinkers that some new ideas would rule the world - these ideas were based on REASON now, not religion. Elite thinkers were convinced that Man could know everything and science was the answer to everything. There was nothing that could not be figured out. One of the most dangerous ideas was this application of Reason TO religion Science is exploding and philosophy and ideas of radical new thought, are exploding Weird new discoveries are throwing everything into question - including Life and Death Galvani - electricity experiments with severed frogs’ legs - people thought that electricity could ANIMATE dead tissue What is Life? What makes us ANIMATE? Nobody knows and Galvani’s experiments weren’t crazy. In this time period - 1700s - 1800s it seemed like Man was getting closer to understanding the biggest, most powerful forces of the Universe First Franksignment - Choose an Age of Enlightenment thinker, do a profile on him/(her if you can find her), lay out some of his/her theories and put it on a blog or in a brief presentation