Mary Shelley's Obsession with the Cemetery

Mary Shelly , author of the award winning book, Frankenstein, would be discussed of her past and how those events in her life had peculiar and interesting connections to the monster she created and herself.

Growing up, Mary was surrounded by death. She never knew her mother because she died after childbirth due to the fatal spread of bacteria. Mary was heartbroken and walked into her mother's steps who was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in the art of writing. Her father remarried and Mary despised the woman and was excluded from her father's household after the marriage.

Often walking in the cemetery just as a child, she would visit her mother's grave stone where she read her mother's work. As she got older, she came as frequent as she did as a child however, without her father. She fell in love with a married man at 16 who was 21 years of age. As she wrote Frankenstein, she seemed to mirror the creature she created metaphorically. Both were longing for a family who would accept them rather than exclude or shun them. The two found a strong fascination and horror in death and both shared their love for literary arts.

I believe that writing helped her cope with the emotional stress that she was given in her childhood and through adulthood. Perhaps she believed that writing such a tale would give a different perspective on those who were shunned, excluded, and seen as monsters.