 Many of Shelley 's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th @-@ century Britain , such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France . Shelley was particularly interested in " the fragility of individual identity " and often depicted " the way a person 's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval , or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism " . In her stories , female identity is tied to a woman 's short @-@ lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money . Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty @-@ one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839 , she always saw herself , above all , as a novelist . She wrote to Leigh Hunt , " I write bad articles which help to make me miserable — but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines . " 
