Mary Shelley’s Mother Was A Feminist, Which Influenced Her Writing.

It's crucial to recognize the significant influence Mary Wollstonecraft had, even though Mary Shelley was unable to know her because she passed away after giving birth. In her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women must get an equal education if they are to advance in society.

While it's possible that these two significant women—each in their own right—couldn't have coexisted, it's obvious that Mary Shelley came from an intellectual family unafraid of challenging social conventions. At a time when women were stigmatized for writing about the more sinister aspects of life, this might have inspired her to create Frankenstein.

Despite growing up without a mother in her childhood, Wollstonecraft's writings had a strong influence on Shelley's writing and ideas because she devoured and relentlessly studied them. Shelley also had no idea that decades later, she would use the abilities and natural aptitude her literary parents had endowed her with to produce one of the most important and timely works of horror sci-fi literature ever produced: Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus. It is therefore strange that the portrayals of women in Shelley's first book and Wollstonecraft's forceful critique of the misogynistic culture of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe could not be more dissimilar.

Shelley portrayed her women as meek, obedient, and dependent on the dominant male narrative, in contrast to Wollstonecraft's arguments for educational equality and female freedom. A thorough reading of Frankenstein, however, reveals how Shelley deftly crafted the stories and characters of these women to actually further the feminist messages Wollstonecraft left behind, rather than to disregard them, quelling the curiosity of this thematic paradox.