Context — Frankenstein — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The context of Frankenstein: the 1816 ghost-story contest at the Villa Diodati, galvanism and the science of life, Romanticism and the sublime,
the Gothic novel, the myth of Prometheus, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Mary Shelley's own life.
How to use this context in an answer about the novel rather than as background.
The ghost-story contest at the Villa Diodati in the wet summer of 1816, with Byron, Percy Shelley and Polidori, and the waking dream Mary Shelley describes in her 1831 introduction: 'We will each write a ghost story' and 'the pale student of unhallowed arts'.
Galvanism and the science of life: Galvani's experiments, Aldini's on the body of an executed murderer in London in 1803, and the talk of Erasmus Darwin's experiments, as in 'galvanism had given token of such things'.
Romanticism: feeling, imagination and the power of nature, and the sublime, the mixture of awe and terror that mountains, glaciers and storms inspire.
The Gothic novel: terror, the supernatural, gloomy settings and forbidden knowledge, and how Frankenstein turns the Gothic towards science.
The subtitle 'The Modern Prometheus': the Titan who made humankind and stole fire for it, and was punished for it, and Milton's Paradise Lost, which the creature reads as a true history.
Mary Shelley's life: the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, who died days after her birth, and William Godwin; her elopement with Percy Shelley; the death of her first baby; and her revision of the novel for the 1831 edition.
Edexcel's 19th-century novel question doesn't mark context: knowing it helps you understand the novel, but exam answers spend their time on the extract's language in part (a) and on the whole novel in part (b).
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
