Similarities Between Mary Shelley And Rousseau

In the book, Frankenstein, the writer, Mary Shelley, was inspired by both John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These play a couple of parts in the book Frankenstein and helped inspire Mary Shelley. I am going to discuss how they inspired Mary Shelley and play a part in Frankenstein by first, explaining “Emile, or education” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and its relation with the story. Then I will do the same with “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by John Locke. This essay will prove my points on how these two authors inspired Mary Shelley.

The book, “Emile, or Education”, was kind of half treatise, half novel that tells the life story of a fictional man named Emile. In this selection, Rousseau is writing the course of Emile’s development and

In my joy, I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain” (Shelley).

Through this painful experience, the creature furthered his knowledge about his surroundings and sensory details. Another learning experience that the creature had endured through a learning process and experience was learning to cook his food by using the fire,

“…for I found some of the offals that the travelers had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savory than the berries I gathered from the trees. I tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the live embers” (Shelley)

Through experience, the creature now knows how to cook his food. One of the most important learning processes that the creature experiences is the ability to speak. This is accomplished through his experience and observations of others

“I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers”