ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by Frankenstein.

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Because who says a flat top can't be scary?

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All right, check out the following passage.

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Mary Shelley... British writer...

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Where would you expect to see this passage?

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And here are the potential answers.

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Fun fact: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein

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when she was just about 20.

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What were we doing when we were 20? [ chuckles ]

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Where would we expect to find a passage like this

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full of other rad biographical information?

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Option A is the first to go. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a Romantic poet.

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A string of straightforward facts about his wife would not be very romantic.

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Also, this passage is clearly just... not a poem.

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Option C is out, too.

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It would also be weird to find this biographical information

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inside the book of Frankenstein.

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It's not like we start learning about J.K. Rowling

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in the middle of Harry Potter.

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It kind of works against the whole Gothic horror vibe, right?

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And then there's option D.

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Well, unless this was a very extensive

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travel guide, we probably wouldn't find

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an entire bio about an author who happened to visit.

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Also, most of the information in the passage has nothing to do with Italy.

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Instead, we'd be more likely to find this biographical information about Shelley,

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a nineteenth-century female writer,

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in a book about other similar writers.

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Kinda just makes sense, right?

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So we're going with option B.

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And thank goodness she didn't write any other mega-successful books.

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We're feeling insecure enough already.

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[ growling ]

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