Frankenstein: Reflects of Mary Shelley's Life Mary Shelley wrote the work Frankenstein at a very young age. Despite her youthfulness, she had experienced many trials and tribulations by the tender age of nineteen. These experiences show in the work Frankenstein. Shelley's personal feelings, experiences and friends appear throughout the novel. In the novel Frankenstein, reflections of Mary Shelley's life show up throughout the book. The characters in the novel reflect Shelley's own feelings and experiences. "The displacement of women obviously reflects a fear of birth and Mary Shelley's own ambivalence about childbearing" (Levine 9).