Frankenstein Trauma Essay

Trauma can influence someone’s life in several different ways, many times, the person allows the trauma to dictate their lives and negatively impact the rest of their lives. Many times people conceal their feelings about the trauma, leading to it being expressed in their attitudes or even other aspects of their lives. Mary Shelley is a prime example of how a person’s feelings or attitudes toward their life experiences can come out in other aspects of their lives. For Mary Shelley, she has experienced many different traumatic events during her life, many which occurred previous to or during the writing of her novel Frankenstein. These events include growing up without a true mother figure as her mother died only 10 days after she was born. In

Mary Shelley began her life promisingly, being born to parents who were well respected by society. She was born “to the celebrated feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the radical philosopher William Godwin”(Huntley). Yet, tragedy struck shortly after, as her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died 10 days after she was born (Huntley). Mary’s life began promisingly and was bound to end up in success, but with the death of her mother, things changed drastically. Without the mother figure in her life, she did not turn out how she wants to. In her novel, she shows how angry she is that she did not have a true mother figure growing up through Victor Frankenstein. Like Mary Shelley, Victor’s childhood starts off very ideal as in the book, Victor says that “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself”(Shelley 39). He then continues on to talk about how his parents had set him up for success in life, but then he says that “On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event…She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death”(Shelley 44-45). Like Mary Shelley, Victor also loses his mother at a young age and has to grow up without a mother figure. By writing Victor’s experience in his childhood to somewhat mirror her own, Mary Shelley comments upon the importance of the mother figure in setting children up for success in their lives. Mary Shelley believes that the trauma of losing her mother early on and not having that influence only leads to darkness in life. She is spiteful that she had to go through such a thing, and wanted to convey how badly people can turn out without a mother in