 Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres , most vividly the Godwinian novel , Walter Scott 's new historical novel , and the Gothic novel . The Godwinian novel , made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin 's Caleb Williams ( 1794 ) , " employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society " , and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin 's novel . However , Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works . In The Last Man , she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world . While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society , The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual 's lack of control over history . 
