Top 10 ideas for teaching Frankenstein at home

It is not often in literature that you find yourself unexpectantly on the side of the monster. Mary Shelley’s powerful and thought-provoking novel challenges our assumptions of good and evil and encourages the audience to see all creations as equal and deserving of love. Frankenstein’s ‘hideous wretch’ seeks only the maternal care it is immediately denied. This is a novel that can lead to fascinating and lively discussion.

Read on for 10 key discussion points and engaging activities that you can set for your students online or over email to support learning at home.

The novel cannot be understood fully without students becoming aware of the fact that its writer was a 20-year-old woman who had already suffered greatly in her short life. Motherless and losing her own child at 17, she drafted the first edition in 1818 after the monster came to her in a nightmare. By the time she had re-edited it in 1831 she had lost another two children and her husband, and much of its softer language was lost.  It is no wonder then that the novel is peppered with references to loss and grief. In her re-edit Shelley writes that ‘lives are decided by eternal forces we are unable to control’ which is a lovely place to begin discussion.

5 key discussion points

1. ‘Lives are decided by eternal forces we are unable to control’ – Shelley. Do students agree or disagree with this statement?

• They may like to look at the idea of fate, or nature verses nurture.
• Can students also see the irony of this statement given the fact that Victor creates a life out of body parts and electricity? Is this why he is punished?
• Do students think that perhaps writing this novel was a cathartic experience for Shelley? Why might that be?

2. What factors would you expect to find in the genre of Gothic literature?

Ask your students to collect ideas. These may include:

• the occult
• dangerous or terrifying occurrences
• suspicious or unnatural behaviour
• images of horror or decay
• the macabre
• the supernatural
• science

Can students find a quotation to support their findings or link it to an event in the novel? A task could be to create their own gothic setting by storyboarding or mind mapping.

3. How is the monster different to stereotypical ideas? Remember, Shelley herself stated, ‘I have an affection for it’.

You may like to keep this as a discussion task, or students could refer to pages 55-56 in the Collins Classroom Classics Frankenstein book and create two lists as seen below:

How are the descriptions the antithesis of each other? How do you feel reading this? How do we feel about Victor? What do you think can be the outcome of this experiment?

4. Explore the relationship between Victor and his monster, could it be described as a parent / child relationship?

You could prompt discussion using the following points and quotations

• Does Victor fail as a parent? ‘Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me. We are enemies’
• In what ways does he try to care for the monster?
• What does the monster want from him? “am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me’
• How is it ironic that Victor says, ‘William, Justine and Henry all died by my hand’, yet has no guilt over his disgust at his own creation whom he wants dead?

5. Other Monsters in literature

The monster is both educated and articulate, sympathetic and revengeful. Can you think of any other monsters or monstrous characters in literature or in films you have seen that are also like this?

It may help to look at the superhero and villain genre here as many of the characters fit the gothic genre and have been ‘tampered with’ supernaturally.

 5 engaging activities

1. Creative response activity

Look at the monster’s speech on Page 107 of the Collins Classroom Classics Frankenstein book :

‘Be calm! I intreat you to make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous’

• Re-enact, direct, storyboard or animate this speech.
• Think about how it would be delivered: scary/scared, desperate/hopeful, pleading/warning.

2. Further thinking

Ask students to come up with three statements about the novel. This activity could be a quick starter or revision task if simple statements such as ‘Victor dies at sea’ are used. It could also be extended to more thought-provoking questioning and follow up discussion with statements such as ‘there is a real possibility with advancements in modern science that a monster such as this could be created’. Further research and reading here could lead to the post-apocalyptic work of Margaret Atwood such as the MaddAddam Trilogy with its theme of genetic mutation, the current research and funding of real human clones, genetics or reference to shows such as Humans where human ‘synths’ are created.

3. Obituary activity

Create an obituary for the funeral of a character of your choice. Look online for Victorian examples and remember that in the Victorian era funerals were as important as weddings. They made a spectacle of death and ensured that funerals were grand and fitting for the life of the one lost. Look at the obituary of Charles Dickens in 1870 as a classic example of these traits.

4. October 29th is National Frankenstein Day!

Imagine you were planning a whole school activity day. What would you suggest? Could there be a themed menu? What would you study in lessons? What would the invitation letter look like? How would you make the day special / terrifying? Is there a dress code?

5. Classroom Display

Now that you have read the whole novel, can you choose your favourite quotation and illustrate it in order to make a classroom display? Be prepared to discuss your choice and why you have decorated it accordingly.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been published as part of the Collins Classroom Classics series of set texts and Shakespeare plays that are perfectly pitched for students. Find out more and view the full range here.

By Joanna Fliski

Joanna Fliski is a freelance writer, secondary English teacher and primary school teacher in Bristol.