Page 3 - Mary Shelley

Plot summary
Robert Walto, an explorer, writes a series of leSers to his sister and telling the story of how his polar expedi>on is trapped in ice. One day he sees a 'gigan>c figure' crossing the ice. The next day he takes on board a mysterious man called Victor Frankenstein.
Victor Frankenstein tells Walton his story of his lfe.
Frankenstein is a scien>st obsessed by the idea of crea>ng and controlling life. When at University he refuses the limits of contemporary science and carries out his research alone. Victor hopes to create a perfect human being but in the end he brings to life a monster made up of organs of dead bodies. Even Frankenstein is horrified by the results of his insane fantasy and rejects his creature. The Monster escapes from the laboratory. Despised and rejected by everyone, the Monster develops a sense of hatred for mankind in general and Victor in par>cular and wants revenge. So he kills Victor’s brother, William. ACer >me, Victor meets the Monster in the Swiss mountains, where he lives alone and isolated. The Monster tells Victor how he has survived and asks him to build a wife for him. Frankenstein agrees but then destroys the new crea>on. In revenge, the Monster kills Victor’s best friend and Elisabeth, Victor’s new wife. Frankenstein wants revenge and chases the monster to the Arc>c where he dies on Walton’s ship. In the end the monster disappears in the Arc>c night and probably dies.
Illustra1on showing Galvani’s experiments anima1ng animals with electrical currents generated by an electrosta1c generator. (1790’s)
Fron1spiece of the 1831 edi1on