Assignment 103

Assignment 103- Literature of the Romantics

Introduction of the Author: 

Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, born August 30, 1797, London, England—died February 1, 1851, London, English Romantic novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein. The only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, she met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley The daughter of a farmer, Wollstonecraft taught school and worked as a governess, experiences that inspired her views in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in 1812 and eloped with him to France in July 1814. She published her late husband’s Posthumous Poems (1824); she also edited his Poetical Works (1839), with long and invaluable notes, and his prose works. Her Journal is a rich source of Shelley's biography, and her letters are an indispensable adjunct.

 

She wrote several other novels, including Valperga (1823), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837); The Last Man (1826), an account of the future destruction of the human race by a plague, is often ranked as her best work. Her travel book History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) recounts the continental tour she and Shelley took in 1814 following their elopement and then recounts their summer near Geneva in 1816.

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s best-known book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831), a text that is part Gothic novel and part philosophical novel; it is also often considered an early example of science fiction. It narrates the dreadful consequences that arise after a scientist has artificially created a human being.Frankenstein had great intelligence and, in time, acquired a deep human-istic culture, even though he committed cruel murders fueled by his thirst for revenge against his irresponsible creator. The work becomes a classic of fiction because it values the essence, perfection, and emotions of art in relation to the dark side of the inventor, sci-entific development, and its limits.

 

Mary Shelley enhances Frankenstein’s concerns and paranoia to the reader, with three great stories. The first starts from a narrative full of details of the majestic Captain Walton, through the letters he sent to his sister about his adventures, among them, the one in which he describes the rescue of a glacier, the one that would become his most recent friend, Victor Frankenstein. The second great story takes place with Victor, who relives the peculiarities of his moments of “playing God” to the Captain, who knows his “creature.” And, to seal the work, Shelley puts Victor face to face with his creation, with a fascinating narrative, presenting us with all the obstacles of his existence.

 

Themes of Frankenstein

 

In This Novel Themes.

• Family, Society, Isolation
• Ambition and Fallibility
• Romanticism and Nature
• Revenge
• Prejudice
• Texts

Family, Society, Isolation

 

 

Frankenstein claims to be a novel that gives a flattering depiction of "domestic affection." That seems a strange claim in a novel full of murder, tragedy, and despair. But, in fact, all that tragedy, murder, and despair occur because of a lack of connection to either family or society. Put another way, the true evil in Frankenstein is not Victor or the monster, but isolation. When Victor becomes lost in his studies he removes himself from human society, and therefore loses sight of his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions. The monster turns vengeful not because it's evil, but because its isolation fills it with overwhelming hate and anger. And what is the monster's vengeance? To make Victor as isolated as it. Add it all up, and it becomes clear that Frankenstein sees isolation from family and society as the worst imaginable fate, and the cause of hatred, violence, and revenge.Both the Frankenstein family and the DeLacey family take in outsiders (Elizabeth and Safie respectively) to love as their own. But these characters are markedly dissimilar to the creature, as they are both nurturing, matriarchal figures to fill in for the absence of mothers.

 

Family may be the primary source for love, and a powerful source for purpose in life at odds with the ambition for scientific knowledge, but it is nevertheless presented as a dynamic in conflict.Throughout the novel, family is an entity fraught with the potential for loss, suffering, and hostility. The Frankenstein family is torn apart by revenge and ambition, and even the idyllic De Lacey family is marked by poverty, the absence of a mother, and a lack of compassion as they turn the creature away. Shelley presents family as an important means for love and purpose, but she also depicts the familial bond as complicated and perhaps impossible to achieve.

 

Ambition and Fallibility

 

“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”-Victor Frankenstein

 

 

Victor and Walton, Frankenstein portrays human beings as deeply ambitious, and yet also deeply flawed. Both Victor and Walton dream of transforming society and bringing glory to themselves through their scientific achievements. Yet their ambitions also make them fallible. Blinded by dreams of glory, they fail to consider the consequences of their actions. So while Victor turns himself into a god, a creator, by bringing his monster to life, this only highlights his fallibility when he is completely incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities that a creator has to its creation. Victor thinks he will be like a god, but ends up the father of a devil. Walton, at least, turns back from his quest to the North Pole before getting himself and his crew killed, but he does so with the angry conclusion that he has been robbed of glory. Neither Victor nor Walton ever escapes from their blinding ambitions, suggesting that all men, and particularly those who seek to raise themselves up in glory above the rest of society, are in fact rash and "unfashioned creatures" with "weak and faulty natures."

Romanticism and Nature

Romantic writers portrayed nature as the greatest and most perfect force in the universe. They used words like "sublime" as Mary Shelley herself does in describing Mont Blanc in Frankenstein to convey the unfathomable power and flawlessness of the natural world. In contrast, Victor describes people as "half made up." The implication is clear: human beings, weighed down by petty concerns and countless flaws such as vanity and prejudice, pale in comparison to nature's perfection.

It should come as no surprise, then, that crises and suffering result when, in Frankenstein, imperfect men disturb nature's perfection. Victor in his pride attempts to discover the "mysteries of creation," to "pioneer a new way" by penetrating the "citadel of nature." But just as a wave will take down even the strongest swimmer, nature prevails in the end and Victor is destroyed for his misguided attempt to manipulate its power.

Nature is also presented as the ultimate wielder of life and death, greater even than Frankenstein and his discoveries. Nature is what ultimately kills both Frankenstein and his creature as they chase after one another further into the icy wilderness. The sublime uninhabited terrains, of equal beauty and terror, frame the novel’s confrontations with humanity so that they underline the vastness of the human soul.

Revenge

 

The monster begins its life with a warm, open heart. But after it is abandoned and mistreated first by Victor and then by the De Lacey family, the monster turns to revenge. The monster's actions are understandable: it has been hurt by the unfair rejection of a humanity that cannot see past its own prejudices, and in turn wants to hurt those who hurt it.First, it ensures that it will never be accepted in human society. Second, because by taking revenge the monster eliminates any hope of ever joining human society, which is what it really wants, revenge becomes the only thing it has. As the monster puts it, revenge became "dearer than light or food."

 

Revenge does not just consume the monster, however. It also consumes Victor, the victim of the monster's revenge. After the monster murders Victor's relatives, Victor vows a "great and signal revenge on the monster's cursed head." In a sense then, the very human desire for revenge transforms both Victor and the monster into true monsters that have no feelings or desires beyond destroying their foe.

 

Prejudice

 

Frankenstein explores one of mankind's most persistent and destructive flaws: prejudice. Nearly every human character in the novel assumes that the monster must be dangerous based on its outward appearance, when in truth the monster is (originally) warm and open-hearted. Again and again the monster finds himself assaulted and rejected by entire villages and families despite his attempts to convey his benevolent intentions. The violence and prejudice he encounters convinces him of the "barbarity of man." That the only character who accepts the monster is a blind man, De Lacy, suggests that the monster is right: mankind is barbaric, and blinded by its own prejudice.

 

Texts

 

Frankenstein is overflowing with texts; letters,notes, journals,inscriptions,and books fill the novel, sometimes nestled inside each other, other times simply alluded to or quoted.The novel is filled with texts, as sources of communication, truth, and education, and as a testament to human nature. Letters were a ubiquitous source of communication during the 19th century, and in the novel, they are used to express innermost feelings. For example, Elizabeth and Frankenstein confess their love for one another through letters. letters are also used as proof, as when the creature copies Safie’s letters explaining her situation, in order to validate his tale to Frankenstein.s. Likewise, in Frankenstein, texts are able to portray the more intimate, emotional truths of the characters in ways that other forms of communication and knowledge cannot.

Work Cited

 

• Ferrasa, Ingrid, and Elaine Ferreira Machado. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” 2022, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357834809_Mary_Shelley's_Frankenstein. Accessed 3 November 2022.
• Florman, Ben. "Frankenstein Themes." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 22 Jul 2013. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/frankenstein/themes Web. 3 Nov 2022.
• Julia, Pearson. “Frankenstein Themes, Symbols, and Literary Devices.” 2020, https://www.thoughtco.com/frankenstein-themes-symbols-4177389. Accessed 3 November 2022.
• Kuiper, Kathleen. "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley". Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft-Shelley. Accessed 3 November 2022.

[Word count-1734]