If you’ve taken AP World History, then you’re likely familiar with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. More specifically, the work of Mary Wollstonecraft in response to both events, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which argued that the education provided to women at the time only set them up to be bystanders in society, best looked at rather than heard. While the changes Wollstonecraft argued for took decades to actually implement, she effectively influenced many of the famous women’s rights activists who pioneered the movement abroad such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller.
What many AP World students may not know is that Wollstonecraft was the mother of Mary Shelley. Shelley is often credited with the creation of the science fiction genre due to her novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, a classic English novel read by many AP Literature classes, including our own at Westmont High School. The writing questions the ethics and boundaries of human creation, as well as the extent to which love, both platonic and romantic, play a role in our happiness. Shelley is also the author of Falker and The Last Man. The latter follows the story of the only man to survive a twenty-first century plague and includes themes of isolation and the failure of the French Revolution and Enlightenment to bring about meaningful change.