Mary Shelley lived in Britain, France, the United States and other countries have completed the industrial revolution, scientific and technological civilization is unprecedentedly developed, astronomy, geography, physics, biology and other disciplines have also made great discoveries in this period. After the Industrial Revolution, the general public blindly followed science and had various illusions about technology changing the world, believing that scientific knowledge is a magic weapon, which "can always provide you with spiritual food, so that you can continue to explore and discover miracles."
Mary Shelley's father, William Gurdwin, was a politician and philosopher, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a pioneer of the feminist movement and the author of The Defense of Feminism, and her family was often visited by academics from various fields, and her father Gurdwin's admirers were endless, and Shelley was one of these young admirers. When they talked about the past and the present together, the topics were diverse, but the talk was more about thinking about many issues at that time, and one of the prominent issues was how human beings viewed the rapid development of science and technology. The great progress and success of science and technology is both encouraging and fretting.
The work was originally produced in a literary game, and in the summer of 1816, the author Mary met with her husbands Shelley, Byron and others on the outskirts of Geneva. It was proposed that each person write a horror story, and only Mary Shelley's story would later take shape.
This work is influenced by famous works such as "The Tempest" and "Paradise Lost", but also contains Mary's own experience. For example, the Creuval in the book is like Shelley incarnation, and frankenstein creates monsters that are vegetarians, just like Mary and Shelley. In the spring of 1817, Mary finished writing Frankenstein, which was published the following year.
For this step of the work, it also shows that after the industrial revolution at that time, science was driven by human curiosity, taking certain means and methods to explore the essence of the natural world, and gradually understanding and using its objective laws. However, the establishment and maintenance of the scientific edifice must be based on two important pillars: First, the production of scientific knowledge needs to be based on objectivity; Second, the production of scientific knowledge should be constrained by human reason. Without these two pillars, the development of science will inevitably lead to the proliferation of scientism and bring unpredictable consequences to mankind. In the novel, Frankenstein is obsessed with the pursuit of scientific knowledge, eager to explore the mysteries of nature, driven by intense curiosity, and lacks rational thinking about the consequences of his actions. With a momentary frenzy, he did something that he could not regret. Frankenstein's final confession of his fate to Walton is like telling a fabled story to admonish, change, or discourage Walton's indomitable desire to take risks. Frankenstein warned that if you blindly pursue supreme power, you will end up in an abyss that will never be recovered. At that time, Walton had been surrounded by icebergs, many people were killed, and then he was forced by the situation to return to the sea. It is very obvious that the moral of Frankenstein's story is that if you act impulsively in order to grasp the vagaries of nature, you will pay a heavy price.
The development of science and technology has overwhelmed human society and human beings themselves, and monsters represent the science and technology that is developing and infiltrating human society in a sense. We can see that the author's worried mood is fully expressed in the work, and the gloomy mood runs through the book and is projected into the text. For example, the four storms in the work herald the advent of change. After reading the whole work, you will find that the author has a very nervous and restless mood.
In the work, the monster created by the author is originally kind and helpful, but in the end it develops into a destroyer of social order and becomes an authentic devil, but even so, it still retains a certain conscience; Frankenstein himself began to think that there was nothing wrong with his actions, and then gradually became guilty, and finally dared to take responsibility and duel with the monster. Subsequent science fiction writers have been inferior to Mary Shelley in this regard.
The novel not only portrays the conflict between human beings and scientific and technological progress, but also shows not only the abuse of science at the technical level and its consequences, but more importantly, it uses the "modern" social context of the unprecedented development of science and technology in the early 19th century to reveal the ugliness of human beings' unscrupulous and arrogant self-struggle driven by bourgeois individualistic values and the great harm it poses to society. The writer consciously integrated the Gothic style into science fiction depictions, profoundly reflected on the sharp contradictions between personal pursuits and social morality and traditional values in the process of modernization, and "expressed the literary and emotional atmosphere at that time". Perhaps it is precisely this rich human concern and advanced social "sense of distress" contained in the novel that makes it a continuous hot spot in British and American culture today in the "postmodern".

Mary Shelley, through Frankenstein's tragedy, knows the place of man in nature and how science and technology should be mastered and used: man should maintain a sense of awe before the interface of nature, a finiteness, and cannot pursue an unlimited knowledge and conquest of nature. If human beings blindly try to control or override nature, and neglect to rationally or ethically consider their own behavior, unpredictable and terrible consequences will be difficult to avoid.
Frankenstein's tragedy stems from his morbid individualistic passion, and the novel is almost a true portrayal of his failed life, and he repeatedly blames himself for his lack of vigilance against passion. Frankenstein, who experienced the calamity of life, realized that the panacea for the treatment of individualistic passion is to maintain a peaceful heart, free from self-attention, return to nature, and integrate into family and society.
Frankenstein's sensitive, arrogant personality makes him pay more attention to himself than to others, and he will selfishly cut off all contact with the outside world for personal interests, including family, lovers and friends, while he is always concerned by them, friendship, family affection, and love will always be his physical and mental shelter. When the experiment failed and the ideal was hit hard, the appearance of his childhood friend Henry made him "suddenly feel calm and full of peace and warmth." In his recollection of the past, Frankenstein could not help but praise sincere friendship: "I once only sought self-interest, and as a result, I imprisoned my own soul, and my heart became more narrow, and in the end, your cordial and sincere friendship gave me warmth, broadened my horizons, and expanded my mind." I became the same person I was many years ago, loving others and being loved by others, happy and carefree. The author praises the power of friendship, no doubt to warn the world to improve themselves, to get out of the narrow thinking of individualism, to integrate into society, and to establish cordial and friendly relations with others.