Set in 19th century Switzerland, Frankenstein depicts the ill-fated experiments of Dr. Frankenstein, as well as their deadly, far-reaching consequences. Motivated by an unbounded passion for knowledge and insights to the secrets of life and death, young Victor Frankenstein creates a Being from various human body parts and, using other scientific advances of the period, successfully brings it to life. The Creature, however, is not what Victor has anticipated. As Victor tries to rid himself of his Creature, the consequences of his experiments take effect--on himself, his friends, his family, and society as a whole.

Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development, and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale. Mary Shelley’s 200-year-old horror story, widely regarded as the original science fiction novel, continues to challenge the modern imagination.

the StudyGuide

By Nick Dear, based upon the novel by Mary ShelleyDirected by Joel Ferre11 Feb 2-March 4, Kalita Humphreys Theater

Produced in association with the Theatre Division, Meadows School of the Arts / Southern Methodist University.

Kim Fischer as the Creature,

photo by Paxton Maroney

The next time someone tries to tell you science fiction isn’t for girls, quiet them down with one name: Mary Shelley, who invented the entire genre when she wrote the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at the age of nineteen.

Born in 1797, Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a renowned feminist writer and philosopher — and although her mother died only a few days after Mary was born, her radical ideas about women challenging their society had a huge impact on Mary’s life. At the age of sixteen, Mary fell in love with the poet Percy Shelley, who was a radical himself and a big fan of her mother’s writing. In 1814, following their first date in the graveyard where her mother was buried, Mary and Percy ran away together to become the literary power couple of the Romantic movement.

Meet the Teenage Girl

Who Invented Science Fiction

by Whitney Milam

MARYSHELLEY:

Season20172018

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Science fiction emerged 200 years ago during a time of great advances in science. Since then, authors have tried to make sense of their world by imagining what the future will look like.

Post-apocalyptic societies, alien invasions, robots, and environmental catastrophes have all played out in this genre which is still popular today. This timeline highlights some of the key moments in sci-fi literature’s history.

1818—Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley tells the story of Victor Frankenstein who engineers a living creature in a monstrous experiment.

Frankenstein is seen as a warning against the expansion of science without a moral context. In the deeply religious pre-Victorian age, suggesting a scientist could challenge God by trying to create human life was profoundly shocking.

1870—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Vern

As exploration of the seas and oceans begins, the popular and influential adventure novel by Jules Verne is released.

Verne’s tale of the despotic Captain Nemo and his undersea adventures on the Nautilus inspires real scientific development. In addition to imagining diving equipment he

Writing the Future: A Timeline of Science Fiction Literature

• 1818

• 1932

• 1969

• 1870

• 1949

• 1987

• 1921

• 1968

• 2013

expands on uses for a submarine. At this time, submarines are only in the very early stages of scientific development. The story is the forerunner of technology taking its ideas from sci-fi. Scientists and explorers such as Ernest Shackleton and Jacques Cousteau later claim him to be inspirational to their achievements.

1921—We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Russian radical Yevgeny Zamyatin writes We shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. It is published in English in 1924.

Zamyatin’s story is set in a dystopian society where men and women are numbered rather than named and live in glass buildings which allow their every move to be observed by the state. The novel suggests the dehumanizing possibilities of technological development. It becomes a direct influence on George Orwell’s 1984.

1932—Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

After visiting America, Aldous Huxley sounds a warning about the dangers of an all-powerful state.

Huxley imagines a dystopian world. His vision of the future questions where technology might take us. He sees a society where genetic engineering has become the norm, thereby eradicating the family. It is a society where science has eliminated unhappiness and the taking of mood-altering drugs is encouraged. Many aspects of his story are considered to be prophetic.

1949—1984 by George Orwell

George Orwell’s grim satire on Stalinism foretold the future even more.

Written during the Cold War, this book is set in a near-future Britain where a totalitarian party curtails all individual freedoms. The Government monitors all private and public activity. A number of concepts from the story, such as Big Brother and Room 101, enter popular culture and remain in use.

1968—Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick

The futuristic novels of Philip K Dick provide the plotlines for many modern sci-fi blockbusters such as Blade Runner and Minority Report.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Dick is fascinated by the question of what constitutes a human being. Blurring the lines between humans and androids, he suggests androids can take on human characteristics, but lack compassion or empathy. The influences in Dick’s work include Jungian psychology, mental illness and drug use.

1969—The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel becomes one of the most important science fiction texts to examine assumptions about gender.

Le Guin’s characters are androgynous, only adopting male or female characteristics once a month. The Left Hand of Darkness is considered to be a breakthrough for female writers in the genre.

1987—Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

Dawn is the first novel in Octavia E Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (1987 – 1989).

This novel examines racial difference in a tale of the alien Oankali who attempt to rescue humanity’s final survivors after a nuclear holocaust. Born in California in 1947, Butler grew up in a socially deprived, mixed-race neighborhood. For a number of years she was the only African-American woman publishing sci-fi. The Xenogenesis novels explore the concepts of reproduction between species, gender, and sexuality.

2013—MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood follows up her science fiction interests first visited in the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).

Maddaddam is the third novel in Atwoods’s trilogy written between 2003 and 2013. It outlines a post-apocalyptic world following a catastrophic genetic engineering program which has wiped out most of humanity. Atwood’s popular trilogy opens up the genre to a new audience not previously familiar with sci-fi. The author terms her work as speculative, rather than science, fiction meaning that scenarios in her novels are Earth-bound and plausible.

Mary Shelley (continued)

Enter Lord Byron, close friend of the Shelleys and infamous Romantic poet in his own right. One fateful summer at Byron’s villa in Switzerland saw the three of them (along with Byron’s doctor, John Polidori, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont) spending long nights debating everything from art to politics to galvanism, also known as raising bodies from the dead using electricity (sound familiar?). During one especially creepy night, Byron challenged everyone to write a ghost story, and from that, the world’s first science fiction novel was born.

Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818 with a preface by Percy Shelley, causing many to assume he was the author since writing books (especially a book like Frankenstein) wasn’t considered a woman’s profession. Following bestseller status and a successful stage adaptation, Mary set the record straight with the second edition in 1822, finally taking credit for her masterpiece. Almost 200 years later, she’d be thrilled to know that Frankenstein remains an iconic story that’s still being adapted today, with both movie and television versions coming out this fall.

1822 wasn’t just a year of success for Mary, but one of tragedy, too: Percy drowned in a shipwreck, leaving Mary widowed and heartbroken at age 24. She fought with Byron over which of them got to keep Percy’s preserved heart (Romantics!) and won, leaving Byron the skull instead.

Mary wasn’t finished transforming the literary world, however — not satisfied with inventing only one new genre, she decided to invent two. Her next book, The Last Man, is widely considered the first post-apocalyptic novel. A deeply personal work for Mary, The Last Man told the futuristic story of the lone survivor of a worldwide plague, critiqued many aspects of Romanticism, and featured characters inspired by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Although it received poor reviews on publication in 1826, The Last Man was republished in the 20th century to increased critical appreciation, being a very modern story with very contemporary themes. Mary Shelley, it seems, was always ahead of her time.

Over two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815.

By shooting its contents into the stratosphere with biblical force, Tambora ensured its volcanic gases reached sufficient height to disable the seasonal rhythms of the global climate system, throwing human communities worldwide into chaos. The sun-dimming stratospheric aerosols produced by Tambora’s eruption in 1815 spawned the most devastating, sustained period of extreme weather seen on our planet in perhaps thousands of years.

The very next year the dimming of the sun spawned the “Year Without a Summer” throughout North America and Europe, resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.

How a Volcanic Eruption Gave Birth to Frankenstein

A Cold, Wet, and Dark Summer Vacation

Its members included the Romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, Percy's mistress Mary Shelley (then 18) Byron's personal physician John Polidori, and Mary's stepsister Claire, who was pregnant with Byron's child. Two years earlier, Mary had eloped with the married Percy, though the couple was able to wed only after Percy's wife committed suicide.

Mount Tambora's eruption produced an unusually cold, dark and wet summer, making outdoor activity unappealing. So the Lake Geneva party stayed indoors, reading to each other from a collection of German ghost stories. When they finished the book, they found themselves at a loss what to do next, so Byron challenged each of the group's members to devise their own ghost story and share it with the others.

Rising to the challenge, Polidori produced the world's first published vampire story, spawning a genre that later included the tales of Count Dracula. Mary, however, suffered from writer's block. At last, an idea came to her in a "waking" dream, most likely inspired by discussions of the discoveries of Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, who had showed that electricity could cause the leg muscles of a dead frog to twitch.

As Mary reports it, she saw:

"The pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion."

Thus was born Frankenstein, initially envisioned as a short story. But, as Mary worked on it over the rest of the year and into the next, it evolved into what is sometimes regarded as the first science fiction novel.

The book was published two years after that gloomy summer of 1816 as Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, recalling the Greek titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, for which he was chained to a rock where an eagle ate out his liver every day.

During the 1800s, people were fascinated with death, the after-life, and the possibility of cheating death altogether. Additionally, scientists were just beginning to harness the true power of electricity. Shelley was well-educated and well-traveled, so she would have been witness to the scientific developments in both of these fields. At the time of the novel’s creation, galvanism was a practice amongst many of Europe’s more eccentric alchemists and scientists. Shelley was seeing the amazing effects galvanism had on dead bodies, and thus composed the tale around it.

Galvanism was first discovered in the late 1700s. While dissecting a frog, a scientist by the name of Luigi Galvani noticed that if he touched a frog’s muscle a certain way, the dead frog’s legs would kick. He soon realized this muscle contraction and movement could also be recreated using small amounts of electricity. Galvani began experimenting on the corpses of executed criminals. Focusing on their faces, he realized that when electricity was applied to specific muscle groups, the faces of the dead would contort as if they were alive and trying to speak, even opening and closing their eyes and mouths.

For the next several decades, Galvanism became a source of scientific intrigue. If electricity could make a body move, could it bring someone back to life? By the time of Mary Shelley, the practice of Galvanism had become somewhat of a fascinating parlor trick. The wealthy and eccentric would invite scientists to “reanimate the dead” to the shock and awe of their guests--some even set up in town squares, creating large scale shows and spectacles!

Scientists soon discovered that the mere application of electricity to a dead body does not bring the person bounding back from the other side. However, it was ultimately the practice of Galvanism that lead scientists to realize that if electricity could jumpstart facial muscles, it could also do the same for someone’s heart. Over 200 years later, one of our best life-saving devices is the defibrillation machine and paddles we use to send an electric shock into someone’s chest, kick-starting their heart back into rhythm. This is a practice we now call cardioversion. Frankenstein is not quite so fictional after all!

The Science That Made Frankenstein

How early experiments with electricity inspired Mary Shelley's reanimated monster.

In the summer of 1816, an extraordinary group gathered at a house at Lake Geneva, expecting to enjoy fresh air and sunshine.