Based on your reading of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Answer to the Prompt:
The Romantic writers existed in opposition to their predecessors who focused on science, logic, reason, and the pursuit of knowledge. Frankenstein is a novel that is largely concerned with pushing these Enlightenment ideals to their extreme. What is Mary Shelley suggesting about science and the pursuit of knowledge? Similarly, what, if any, is the moral of the story?
1. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (Ed. E. Schor)
Useful essays include: “Making a ‘monster’: an introduction to Frankenstein”; “Frankenstein, feminism, and literary theory”; “Mary Shelley as Cultural Critic”
2. The Endurance of Frankenstein (Ed. G. Levine & U.C. Knoepflmacher)
Useful essays include: “Fire and Ice in Frankenstein”; “Female Gothic”; Monsters in the Garden”; “Mary Shelley’s Monster: Politics and psyche in Frankenstein”;
3. Mary Shelley in Her Times (Ed. B. Bennett & S. Curran)
Includes an essay titled: “The Impact of Frankenstein”
4. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (A. Mellor)
Useful chapters include: “Making a Monster”; “Usurping the Female”; “Problems of Perception”
5. Critical Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Ed. M. Lowe-Evans)
Useful essays include: “A Feminist Critique of Science”; “Mary Shelley’s Daemon”; “Mary Shelley on the Therapeutic Value of Language”
6. Modern Critical Views: Mary Shelley (Ed. H. Bloom)
Useful essays include: “Night Thoughts on the Gothic Novel”; “Victor Frankenstein’s Dual Role”; “‘Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts’: Language, Nature, and Monstrosity”; “Horror’s Twin: Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve”;
7. Modern Critical Interpretations: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Ed. H. Boom)
Useful essays include: “Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe”; “My Monster/My Self”; “Frankenstein’s Fallen Angel”; “‘My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster”;
8. Mary Shelley A Literary Life (J. Williams)
Biography of Shelley; Chapter 4 focuses on the writing of Frankenstein.