""Vue de Genève, depuis Cologny"" by Jean-Antoine Linck is licensed under Public Domain
Geneva, Switzerland serves as the primary setting in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is here where Victor’s ancestors are from, where he is born, where his family lives, and ultimately the location to which he always returns.
Mary Shelley likely chose the location of the novel for its aesthetics, based on a trip that she took with Lord Byron, Percey Shelley, and Claire Clairemont; it is also on this trip that she will begin writing the first science fiction novel. This particular area of Switzerland was known for its tall, snow-capped mountains and lake, both of which drew tourists into the region. Mary was also known to describe the lake as “blue as the heavens which it reflects” in some correspondence. As recalled, however, the year in which Shelley wrote the novel was also the Year Without a Summer in which there was very little sunshine, temperatures dropped, and agriculture failed.
The climate of Switzerland and the Year Without a Summer culminated into the most dark, gothic setting that Shelley could possibly draw upon for her novel’s setting. The novel is already thematically dark, dealing with themes of nature, isolation, and fate, but the accompaniment of physically dark, naturalistic setting join together in forming the work’s gothic identity.
“Ghost Stories, Opium and Rain: The Doomed Holiday That Inspired Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Penguin.co.uk, 30 Aug. 2022, www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/geneva-holiday-frankenstein-mary-sh….