Shelley's writings were influenced by her parents, as well as the nineteenth century into which she was born. Several critical and influential people in Shelley's life had achieved fame. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a famous feminist writer. Her father, William Godwin, was a famous philosopher and novelist. Shelley's own husband, Percey Bysshe Shelley, was also a successful writer. These people became her inspiration to write.

Through the merging of her life experiences and her inspirations, Shelley formulated many of the plots, characters, and story lines in her novels. There is a direct relationship between Mary Shelley's works and her childhood, environment, and close experiences with death and tragedy.

Like many other authors, Mary Shelley's childhood years had a major effect and influence upon her literary works. Mary Shelley had a very lonely and detached childhood. "Her childhood was hardly unha

The strained relationships between Mary and her family caused her to feel great loneliness. "[Shelley] detested her stepmother, idolized her dead mother, and sought love from her reserved and distant father" (Shatlock, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers 568). At the age of fifteen, Shelley's father shipped her off to Scotland to ease tensions in the family (Schlueter, An Encyclopedia of British Women Wrtiers 568). This increased her innermost feelings of isolation, and her desire for love from her father. It also gave definition to many of her characters. In turn, Shelley made her characters suffer the horrible loneliness and isolation that she experienced herself as a child.

Another experience with death that Shelley had to deal with was suicide. Her half-sister Fanny as well as her husband's first wife Harriet, both committed suicide (Mary Shelley, Desert-Fairy 2). This dramatically influenced her works. Suicide shows up numerous times in many of Shelley's works. At the end of Frankenstein, the monster sets himself on fire committing suicide because he can no longer stand to be alone in life (Shelley, Frankenstein 190). In the Last Man, Lionel Verney's sister Perdita Verney, kills herself next to the grave of her dead husband because she can no longer live without him (Shelley, The Last Man 155). Suicide also shows up in Shelley's novel Mathilda. Mathilda's father jumps off a cliff and drowns (Shelley, Mathilda 214).

Mary Shelley's works, in addition to being influenced by her childhood and environment, were also deeply impacted by her close experiences with death and tragedy. Shelley had to face the harsh realities of death much sooner than she was able to comprehend it. Her mother died ten days after she was born due to pregnancy complications. Shelley went through her life feeling solely responsible. "She was burdened with the suspicion, however irrational, that she was partly responsible for her mother's death" (Ball, Dictionary of Literary Biography 286).

Shelley, in her novel Mathilda, has Mathilda's mother die in the same fashion that her mother did: shortly after her birth due to pregnancy complications (Shelley, Mathilda 180). The tragic nature of the death of Shelley's mother is the reason that it shows up in several of her works.

John Milton's Paradise Lost had a profound affect upon the novel Frankenstein. The devil's spirit in Paradise Lost permeates through the monster in Frankenstein. Shelley has the monster speak words directly from Paradise Lost. The monster says, "The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of G-D and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone" (Frankenstein, Desert-Fairy 2). Here he speaks of how truly horrible being completely alone is. Shelley also has the monster say "Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other human beings...I was wretched, helpless and alone. Many times I consider Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition" (Frankenstein, Desert-Fairy 2). In the later part of the book, Victor Frankenstein refers to the monster using the exact terms used in Paradise Lost; the fiend, the demon, the devil, an

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