When one thinks of a book such as Frankenstein, one thinks of it as purely a horror story and not much else. However, there is far more to the story than is first apparent. Shelley has effectively mixed the horror genre with some autobiographical elements.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, two notable English thinkers. Wollstonecraft died days after Mary's birth leaving her in the care of William and a nanny named Louisa. Three years later, Louisa was fired for being in an illicit relationship with one of William's students. After William remarried, Mary was sent to Scotland to live with the David Baxter family.

Meanwhile, William became friends with the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. When she was sixteen, Mary returned to London. Sometime later she and Shelley became lovers, despite the objections of Mary's parents and Shelley's wife Harriet. They eloped to Paris taking Mary's half-sister Jane with them. The trio then traveled to Switzerland, where Mary became pregnant and Jane and Percy became lovers.

They soon returned to England to find themselves mired in scandal. Mary soon gave birth to a daughter, Clar

It is very important to note that Mary was only about 18 or 19 years of age when she wrote Frankenstein. Yet, she had experienced such a dysfunctional childhood (and in many ways was still experiencing that childhood) that she did not know what to do in her life. She was still only a teenager, but she had had three children by the time she was 17. Her unconscious fears about everything were unleashed when she began writing Frankenstein. Mary Shelley's novel thrilled audiences and provoked many different adaptations of her work. However, the thread of reality that she wove throughout her work says more about her life than any autobiography ever could.

Mary Shelley based the character of Victor Frankenstein on her husband Percy. Shelley published his first volume of poetry under the pen name "Victor." He had a sister named Elizabeth (in the book, Dr. Frankenstein's fiancee is named Elizabeth). Shelley also had the same education as Victor-chemistry, alchemy, foreign languages, and he goes to the university of Ingolstadt. Finally Shelley was indifferent to children. He had abandoned his first wife and children and had not grieved for the loss of his and Mary's first child.

Mary threw Jane out of her home. Jane, who had changed her name to Claire and had begun to pursue Lord Byron, invited Percy and Mary to accompany her and Byron to Switzerland. There, the four spent the coldest summer of the century engaging in intense conversation, reading ghost stories, and other various activities. It was there in Switzerland on June 15 that Mary conceived of the idea of Frankenstein.

There are several parallels between the monster and Mary. First she identifies with the monster (as a rejected ch

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