Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is a novel by the English writer Mary Shelley. First published anonymously in 1818, it become a literary sensation. This Gothic tale of terror was conceived during a summer holiday in Switzerland where Mary and Percy Shelley and Byron had been reading German ghost stories. All three agreed to write a supernatural tale. Inspired by a half-waking nightmare Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the only one of the stories to be completed. The text draws on the example of Wordsworth, Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (all greatly admired by Shelley) for its powerful descriptions of nature. It reworks the myth of the ‘Noble Savage' (seen in Aphra Benn's Oroonoko and rendered into theoretical terms by the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau), which reads nature as essentially good but corrupted by the ill treatment of civilisation.
In the plot, Walton (an Arctic explorer) narrates the story through his letters. Victor Frankenstein is an idealistic Swiss student of natural philosophy who learns at university how to give life to inanimate matter. He gathers old body parts and constructs a human being, giving it life. The creature is huge and immensely powerful but loathsomely ugly and terrifying. Through studies of Goethe, Plutarch and Paradise Lost, he learns about human emotion, proving to be articulate and intelligent. However, he is lonely and miserable, turning upon his creator and murdering Frankenstein's friend and bride. Frankenstein follows the creature to the Arctic to destroy him but dies in pursuit, relating his tale to Walton. The monster, after articulating to Walton his self-abhorrence, disappears into the Arctic to end his own life.
Frankenstein is not a supernatural tale as such since the monster's creation is described in rational scientific terms, thus making the novel the first work of science fiction. It can be read as Romantic response to the dramatic changes of the Industrial Revolution, a cautionary tale of the dehumanising effects of technology. Nature is portrayed in Frankenstein as passive and feminine, something that can be penetrated and understood by the man of reason and science. The scientist usurps the role of God to take power over nature with devastating results, creating a monster that nobody can control. Frankenstein is a character with literary precedents in Faust and Prometheus both figures of intellect and overwhelming ambition who end up destroying themselves and all they love in its pursuit.
The novel has been examined by a multitude of literary critics. Psychoanalytic readings emphasise Frankenstein's issues with women, particularly his dead mother. These readings also suggest that the monster may be the emobodiment of Frankenstein's unconscious murderous desires. Marxist readings suggest that Frankenstein is a representative of the alliance of science and capitalism that generated the Industrial Revolution. The monster in this reading is the working class, who have been created by the owners of factories but then abandoned by them. The monster, in turning on his creator, serves as a warning of the consequences of unfettered, irresponsible capitalism and its thoughtless creation of a new 'race' of people.
Frankenstein has become an icon of popular with fifty films based on the story, most notably starring Boris Karloff and later an adaptation directed by Kenneth Branagh, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).