The 1818 novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, the daughter of two idealists and pacifists. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), while her father, William Godwin, was a pacifist-anarchist philosopher who believed deeply in human rationality and the perfectibility of mankind. Shelley grew up in the long shadow of her parents' progressive politics and was proudly influenced by them. Yet, the creature she created, intelligent, articulate, emo