RESEARCH AND REPORT ON THE PERSONAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS OF THE TWO COMPOSERS OF FRANKENSTEIN NAMELY
Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein in 1816 at age nineteen. ... Although the works are on the same subject the composers were entirely different people and affected through dissimilar personal and historical contexts’. These contexts, in particular, lead to two different and contrasting presentations of the same subject. Despite living in historical periods over one hundred years apart Mary Shelley and James Whale both lived in eras marked by great political and social change. ... This was the time of great artists like Thomas Gainsborough and composers such as Jane Austen. ... Talking movies began around 1930, yet in 1931, the year Whale directed Frankenstein the biggest hit was the silent movie “City Lights” starring Charlie Chaplin. Both historical periods offered a different level of prosperity and success and this was reflected in the different philosophical outlooks adopted by each period. ... Mary Shelley herself was living comfortably in Europe and by 1816, when she wrote Frankenstein she was in Switzerland with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. ... Although Frankenstein is a predominately Gothic novel there is evidence of Romanticism in the writing. ... James Whale directed Frankenstein in 1931, a time between the wars and the beginning of the Great Depression. ... Her father’s artistic friends visited and included the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose poem, The Ancient Mariner, a poem about a man struggling against his inner demons, is said to have influenced here in writing Frankenstein.