Key Themes & Exam Technique
The Five Major Themes
Every essay on Frankenstein connects to one or more key themes. The five most commonly tested are: dangerous knowledge and ambition, creation and responsibility, monstrosity and prejudice, isolation and companionship, and nature versus nurture.
Dangerous Knowledge: "So much has been done… more, far more, will I achieve" (Victor's Promethean ambition). Creation & Responsibility: "A new species would bless me as its creator" (Victor wants worship, not responsibility). Monstrosity: "I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open" (the pronoun 'it' dehumanises from birth). Isolation: "I am alone and miserable" (the Creature's plea for a companion). Nature vs Nurture: "From that moment I declared everlasting war against the species" (society creates the monster).
Key Quotations Bank
"A new species would bless me as its creator and source." — Victor's hubris: he wants godlike worship.
"Workshop of filthy creation" — "filthy" reveals Victor's subconscious disgust at his own work.
"Breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." — Victor's immediate rejection of his creation.
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man?" — the novel’s title-page epigraph draws from Paradise Lost, challenging Victor's right to create and abandon.
"I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me." — The Creature's most sympathetic plea.
"I shall be with you on your wedding-night." — The Creature's threat, creating dramatic irony.
"In his murder my crimes are consummated." — Revenge brings no peace; "consummated" links death and marriage.
"Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded." — The Creature's awareness of its permanent isolation.
What the 19th-Century Novel Question Tests
Your response is assessed on three strands: your critical response to the text with well-chosen references (AO1), your analysis of the writer's methods — language, structure and form (AO2), and your understanding of context (AO3). You will receive a printed extract (~400 words) and must write about the extract AND the novel as a whole. Check your exam board's specimen paper and mark scheme for the exact weightings and timings that apply to your exam.
AO1 — Critical response: Build a clear argument supported by well-chosen references from the extract AND the whole novel. AO2 — Writer's methods: Analyse Shelley's methods — language, structure, narrative voice, symbolism. AO3 — Context: Embed context (Enlightenment, Romanticism, Gothic, biography). Never bolt context on as a separate paragraph.
Essay Structure
Use PEALCE: Point → Evidence → Analyse Language → Link to Context → Evaluate. Balance extract analysis (2–3 paragraphs) with whole-novel references (2–3 paragraphs). The biggest mark differentiator is close analysis of methods — analyse what they do, don't just identify them.
Point: Shelley presents Victor's rejection of the Creature as an act of parental failure. Evidence: "I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard." Analysis: The pronoun "it" immediately dehumanises the Creature, denying it personhood. The focus on a single "dull yellow eye" reduces the being to one unsettling detail, reflecting Victor's inability to see beyond surface appearance. The passive phrasing — "it breathed" rather than "he breathed" — distances Victor from responsibility. Context: Shelley, whose own mother died in childbirth, was deeply aware that creation carries moral obligations. Victor's rejection of a conscious being echoes the Enlightenment's blind faith in progress without consideration of consequences. Evaluate: This moment establishes Shelley's central argument: the true horror is not the Creature's appearance but the creator's refusal to take responsibility.