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Frankenstein is a gothic novel written in 1818 by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Legend has it that Shelley composed Frankenstein while vacationing in Switzerland with her husband, Percy B. Shelley, and Lord Byron, both of whom were literary celebrities by then. As the story goes, the group decided to pass the time during a terrible storm by writing ghost stories. In Mary Shelley’s case, the result was a first draft of Frankenstein, which would launch her career as female writer when such a thing was believed to be a contradiction in terms.

At the time it was published, Frankenstein, the story of an ambitious doctor who successfully animates a human corpse, was considered not merely a horror story but a serious novel of ideas. Today, the epistolary novel is enshrined in not only the literary canon but the popular imagination as well.

The novel opens on Robert Walton, an English adventurer on an expedition to the North Pole, his lifelong dream. During this voyage, Walton and his crew find a weary man traveling by dogsled and take him aboard their ship. Once the traveler, Victor Frankenstein, has recovered some of his strength, Walton asks him why he is traveling through the Arctic alone. After growing more comfortable with Walton, Victor decides to share his story.

Taking over the novel’s narration, Victor tells Walton about his idyllic childhood as the son of a wealthy and altruistic Swiss family. His father, Alphonse, adopts young Caroline, the orphaned daughter of his dear friend. Later, they fall in love and are married, bearing Victor and two other sons. Carrying on her husband’s altruism, Caroline later takes in Elizabeth, a young girl in foster care, encouraging her and Victor to grow closer.

Victor’s childhood passes happily, aside from the tragic death of his mother. Soon after this, he leaves home to attend university at Ingolstadt, where his passion for science thrives under the tutelage of Waldeman, a chemistry professor. Also at Ingolstadt is Henry Clerval, a childhood friend of Victor’s studying morality and virtue. Indifferent to such subjects, Victor spends day and night in the laboratory, developing a consuming interest in the force that imparts life to a human being. Eventually, Victor’s interest morphs into obsession, and he decides to conduct a dangerous experiment: to create a human being out of pieces of the dead.

Haunting cemeteries and charnel houses, Victor tells no one of his idea, and years pass without him visiting home. Finally, his work is complete. The yellow eyes of the creature open, the experiment a success. But when Victor beholds the creature’s grotesque form, he is horror-stricken and flees the laboratory. When he returns, the creature has disappeared.

Abandoning the study of science that once captivated him, Victor joins Henry in studying languages and poetry. He feels ill whenever he thinks of the monster he created but hopes it has disappeared forever. However, he soon receives word from home that his younger brother, William, has been murdered in the countryside near the Frankenstein estate.

Traveling back to Geneva, Victor is seized by an unnamable fear. Arriving home, he staggers through the countryside in the middle of a lightning storm, wracked with grief. Suddenly, he sees a figure, illuminated in a flash of lightning: he instantly recognizes it as his grotesque creation. At that moment, he realizes the monster is his brother's murderer.

Joining his family at the estate, Victor is horrified to learn that the Frankensteins’ maid, Justine, has been falsely accused of the murder after William’s locket was found in her possession. Convinced that no one will believe his story about the monster, Victor remains silent, and Justine is executed for the crime.

Months later, while on a solitary hike in the mountains, Victor comes face to face with the creature. To Victor’s surprise, the monster begins to narrate what he has experienced since fleeing Victor's laboratory. Wracked by hunger, he wandered great distances, eventually taking shelter near the cottage of a French family. Observing them, he acquired language, as well as an extensive knowledge of the ways of humanity. Although he eventually befriended the family’s blind patriarch, who was drawn to the monster’s refinement, he was eventually driven away by the old man’s kin.

Full of self-loathing, the monster decided to travel to Geneva and seek revenge on Victor. When he encountered William in the forest, the monster approached the boy, hoping for compassion. Instead, William ridiculed the creature, prompting the monster to strangle him. Stealing the boy’s locket, the creature fled to a nearby barn, where he became entranced by Justine’s beauty.