Writing Like Mary Shelley

Yesterday I discovered that I write like Daniel DeFoe and a couple of other folks, at least . . .

Today my recent high school graduate daughter Betsy tried the test for herself, using an assignment she wrote for me this year for our local home school study center. The class used the Veritas Press Omnibus III: Reformation to the Present assignment based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus .  One writing assignment calls for students to write in the voice of one character urging Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster, to "do the right thing" to save a young girl about to be executed for a murder she did not commit.

Betsy did a nice job on this assignment, writing as Victor's fiancee Elizabeth in this opening paragraph:

Oh Victor, you know it is right to save Justine at all costs, and otherwise your conscience may never give you rest again. How dark will your days be! how brooding your nights! How shadowed shall our life together be with such a cloud overspreading it! If you speak up, your conscience will be as clear as it can be, and even if others mock you, I will believe you, I will do my best to support you in your most insupportable hours. Is not assurance of my love some help? If you should succeed the people will be aware of the beast and full of zeal to destroy him. If he should be caught, what relief to us all; if not, at least they will be warned of the danger. Dear, sweet, beloved Justine will be safe, the town will be safe, you will be safe. I will be safe.

When she plugged in this essay the little program gave her great gratification: she writes like Mary Shelley! :-)