Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is 200 years old, yet still packs a punch. The novel explores fundamental human questions about life and death, who creates and why, and what our responsibilities are to the things we create. While perhaps no ordinary teenager, Mary Shelley conceived and wrote Frankenstein when she was 18 years old, and saw it published by the time she was 21, in 1818. Shelley would edit and revise portions of the novel once again in 1831.

The novel contains elements of the Gothic with its singular, brooding protagonist in Dr. Victor Frankenstein, as well as macabre and dark subject matter. It reflects the Romanticism movement of the late 18th century, which celebrated nature, emotion over reason, and exploration into the supernatural and unusual. Frankenstein is also considered by many to be the first science fiction novel, as it explores the effect of an imagined scientific premise on the world of its characters.

As you begin this lesson which focuses on the first three chapters of Frankenstein, keep several essential questions in mind:

What does it mean to create, to be a creator? What drives humans to explore the unknown, to create something new? To what purpose?