Frankenstein By Mary W. Shelley
Mary W. Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft was a woman who fought for the rights of women When Godwin Shelley was eighteen years old, she began writing “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus,” two years after becoming pregnant with her first child, whom she did not name. “Nurse the baby, read,” she had written in her journal day after day until the eleventh day, when she wrote, “I awoke in the night to give it suck it looked to be sleeping so softly that I would not wake it,” and then, “Find my baby dead.” The sadness over that loss was accompanied by a fear of “milk fever.” Her breasts were swollen, inflamed, and unsucked, and her sleep became feverish as well. She wrote in her diary, "Dream that my tiny baby returned to life again; that it had just been chilly, and that we massaged it in front of the fire, and it survived." “Wake up and there is no baby.”
She was probably still breastfeeding her second kid when she started writing “Frankenstein,” and she was pregnant with her third by the time she finished. She didn't put her name on her book—she published "Frankenstein" anonymously in 1818, partly out of fear of losing custody of her children—and she didn't identify her monster either. One critic referred to it as "this nameless androdaemon." The monster was listed on the playbill for the first theatrical production of “Frankenstein,” staged in London in 1823 (by which time the author had given birth to four children, buried three, and lost another unnamed baby to a miscarriage so severe that she nearly died of bleeding that stopped only when her husband had her sit on ice).
The Publishers of the Standard Novels, in selecting “Frankenstein” for one of their series, expressed a wish that I should furnish them with some account of the origin of the story. I am the more willing to comply, because I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so very frequently asked me — “How I, when a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” It is true that I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print; but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can scarcely accuse myself of a personal intrusion.