Similarities Between Mary Shelley And Edgar Allan Poe

Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe were Gothic novelists who lived and wrote in the 19th century. They both led unconventional and even controversial lives and their behavior could be described as unethical and scandalous. They both created characters who were inhuman and monstrous. The plots of their stories were frightening, included themes which were unethical, immoral and even anti-religious. Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797 in London to educated, liberal parents. Her mother was a feminist author who wrote books encouraging women’s rights. She had a daughter who was older than Mary who was born when she had an affair with a solder. Her father was a philosophy professor who taught at Oxford University. Mary’s

Poe died under very suspicious circumstances in 1849 when he failed to arrive in Philadelphia. He was found in Richmond completely disoriented and died in a hospital from “congestion of the brain” which could have been chronic alcoholism, drug use, poisoning or mental illness (biography.com). Both Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe wrote about characters who were monstrous and very frightening. In many ways they were both monsters and not human. Mary Shelley wrote about the monster in Frankenstein who said “why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust” (Shelley 105). Edgar Allan Poe described the character of Roderick Usher as no longer looking human after some unexplained circumstances had taken place.
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity (Poe