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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a gothic work of literature written during the height of the Romantic Era—a period in the 19th century when her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friends Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron were writing classic poetry full of passion that spurned the conventional doctrines of the Old World and rejected the over-emphasis on Reason of the Enlightenment. As E. Michael Jones, has noted, however, their orientation was still rooted in a faithless and naturalistic approach to life. They had no interest in the salvation story of the Old World or its religion. Perhaps not coincidentally, they literally left a string of bodies in their wake, as Janet Todd has pointed out: Percy’s first wife drowned herself after he left her to run away with the 17-year-old Mary (daughter of the authoress of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). Mary’s half-sister killed herself. Two of their children then died at a young age. Mary Shelley was deeply depressed and her husband was essentially a libertine masking his license in Romanticism. From this perspective, Shelley’s gothic horror fiction Frankenstein seems at least somewhat semi-autobiographical. Her husband could be said to be represented by Victor Frankenstein in the novel and the monster could be said to be the personification of all his machinations and the death and misery that his commitment to passion and Romance ultimately brought about.
What is...
When his creator spurns him and rejects him because he is hideous, the superficiality of the creator is seen: the creator was not creating out of love but rather out of narcissism. When the creature manifested proved to truly be made in the image and likeness of the creator (his spiritual superficiality reflected in the physical deformities of the creature), the creator reacted with personal revulsion: it was like Dorian Gray seeing the portrait of his own soul for the first time. The creature’s heart is wounded and his innocence suffers as he strives to find a being with whom he can come into contact in human sympathy. He reads Milton’s Paradise Lost and feels like Satan who is rejected by God. Just like Milton’s poem was a rebuke against the Puritanical God of the Protestant Reformation—a God Who created willy-nilly to save some and reject others, the monster is a rebuke against Romanticism, which essentially sprang from the same head as the Reformation—just later on down the line. Neither was rooted in the traditional values and norms of the Old World doctrines that had brought stability for centuries during the Middle Ages.
Shelley’s Victor is like her husband Percy, in his push for fame…
Works Cited
Jones, E. Michael. Libido Dominandi. Sexual Liberation and Political Control. St. Augustine’s Press, 2000.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Todd, Janet. Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Charles Darwin, Origin of Species There are many themes which readers can discern in Mary Shelley's inestimable work of literature, Frankenstein. They include the virtues of humanity vs. The vices of monstrosity, the power and effect of family and "community" (Bentley 325), as well as the considerable ramifications of ambition and work. However, the prudent reader will perceive that the principle motif unifying all of these themes, and
Her list includes the following: culture / Nature reason / Nature male/female mind/body ( Nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality ( Nature) human / Nature (non-human) civilised/primitive ( Nature) production/reproduction ( Nature) self/other At first glance, this list seems to capture the basic groupings and gender associations that are at work in Mary Shelley's novel. The Creature exemplifies animality, primitiveness, and physicality, whereas Victor represents the forces of civilization, rational production, and culture. Victor is part of a happy family
Shelley's Frankenstien Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein Monster Mary Shelley is the author of the famous novel Frankenstein and was born in London, England the year of 1797 (Merriman, 2006). Shelley came from strong genes as both her mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) and father (William Godwin) were considered philosophers and enlightened thinkers (Merriman, 2006). Shelley is credited (believed) to have started the science fiction genre during this time period. As a writer, Shelley
As his views on society would force him, to use other body parts of common people and it would be the citizens of the village who would suffer Frankenstein's wrath. This is important, because the underlying class struggle, would be used later on (by historians) to draw parallels about similar incidents that were occurring throughout society at the time. A good example of the different Marxist theories can be
What Victor is saying is that in order to create a living being from the dead, he must haunt the graveyards like a human ghoul and experiment on live animals to "animate" "lifeless clay," being the deceased remains of human beings. From this admission, it is abundantly obvious that Victor, like Prometheus, sees "clay" as the foundation for creation, a substance which is part of the earth itself and
Monsters exist everywhere. The exit in fiction and the real world. Their acts may spark a myth or are myths and tall tales. Whether they are used for entertainment or to show history in its darkest moments, people have used monsters since the dawn of modern human. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen writer of "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" and "The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud will provide a lens for analysis of some