During the 18th and 19th centuries, people began to question the existence of God. They began to accept the theory’s of the philosophers, the early scientists, over the previously widely accepted and virtually unchallenged believe in the church and there idea that everything- from your personality and how knowledgeable you are to the rising and setting of the sun- was a result of God and his plan. One of these philosophers was John Locke. I believe his theory, which he explains in his book ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, partially influenced Mary Shelly in the writing of her 1818 book ‘Frankenstein’.
Mary Shelly was of a rear bread for the 18th and 19th centuries, she was an educated woman. She was also a Gothic Fiction writer. Gothic fiction is a genre meant to reveal ideas about human nature through intertwining facts and real scientific theories into their works of science fiction, which are carefully crafted to be bearly in the realm of impossibility. The results of this specific blend of fact and fiction are the reader learning about the best scientific theories and experiments of the time. During the time that Shelly was an active writer one of the hot topics among the intellectuals of the world was John Locke’s book ‘An Essay Concerning Human’. In his book, Locke explains his theory that all humans are born the same, as blank slates. He believes that our personality and knowledge are constructed out of our experiences, rather than being innate or built in by some great creator. Locke’s reasoning for this comes back to a central idea nobody knows anything about things that they have not experienced either first or second hand either your own experience or hearing/reading about someone else’s experience. Locke also believes that complex ideas are based on multiple simple ones. In her 1818 book, ‘Frankenstein’, Shelly explores some aspects of Locke’s theory, in particular, his theory that we are born with no knowledge at all, and that for us to develop complex ideas and understanding we must first have a foundation in multiple simple ideas.