Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein deeply develops the trope of nature vs. nurture. The romantic era is characterized by a desire to revert to natural animalistic living in the world. Shelley’s main characters embody nature and nurture respectively. Victor, raised in a loving home, kills with no concern and disregards his caring family. The Monster, Victor’s creation, on the other hand, is forced to live in nature like an animal with no companion. Victor is Shelley’s direct comment on the Victorian lifestyle characterized by material possession and religious moral structure. Victor embodies one who is grounded in societally constructed niceties and formalities but is corrupted by the lifestyle. The monster is shown to be the morally correct character

“Frankenstein” is a gothic/science fiction novel that keeps the reader at the edge of their seat. It is filled with scenes of love, power, tragedy, and much more. This novel, is packed to the rims with themes and lessons, most of them dealing with creation; however, I wanted to discuss a theme that is lying beneath the surface and is buried in the text. This paper explores how Frankenstein mistakes friendship for possession. This theme will be analyzed using gender, class, a tone of disgust, possession, and disappointment, imagery of beauty, and lastly, metaphor.

creating an image of Frankenstein involved in a game with nature for his own personal goal. Instead of adhering to the Romantic policy of the appreciation of the beauty, he seeks what is concealed beyond his vision forgetting his relationship with the environment.

Shelley depicts the romantic’s love for nature and the desire to understand and acquire nature’s power. Frankenstein finds comfort when he is at his lowest, but at the same time, he is horrified by his creation and its quest for revenge.

To conclude, in this novel nature appears to be the most significant element that always cheers Victor’s up and keeps him healthy and sanity. The setting of nature becomes fundamental since it is the only place that gives the protagonist comfort. Moreover, Victor has obsession on nature and his obsession is inane because he ignores all the people to be isolated in nature; perhaps this is one of Victor’s flaws or personality. Furthermore, being stupid and smart as in the case of Victor Frankenstein might be natural for Frankenstein to be drawn to compulsive tendency. Finally, Shelley uses excessive elements of nature in her novel as a source

In Mary Shelley´s Gothic novel, Frankenstein, the Monster once claimed, “The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” Frankenstein, since the 1910 film adaptation, has known a series of several adaptations that changed drastically, not only the plot but one of the main characters, the Monster, from stealing its creator´s name to being portrayed as a cold villain. Though, in the original storyline, the biggest threat to society is the creator itself, the one pretending to play as God, Victor Frankenstein. This essay will discuss the nature of the main characters of the novel and conclude who is the “real monster” in the end.

This is one of the ways in which Shelley, then, both embraces and simultaneously contests this particular romantic ideal. The moment which Shelley describes in Frankenstein is neither a moment recalled from her personal experience, such as a contemplative moment in nature, nor is the narrative voice her own, yet she is still portraying a particular quest to achieve the sublime. That quest, of course, is Victor Frankenstein’s effort to create a living being out of raw material in his laboratory. It is particularly curious that this quest occurs within the confines of Victor’s private, secluded laboratory, which is unlike the natural, pastoral environments of so many romantic texts. Yet, note the nature imagery in the following line, in which Victor expresses his feelings about the undertaking in one of the important quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley : “No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success," he tells the reader, recalling the heady project in his lab. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through…. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me" (Shelley 51). Victor Frankenstein is aromatic character to the extent that he reflected the romantic writers’ emphasis on a new way of seeing. The romantics believed that it was individual and

What purpose does it serve to have multiple narrators telling a story? In Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein, three main narrators tell the story about the creation of a monster and the events that follow. The job of narrator shifts between Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster that Victor creates. As each narrator shares his own recollection of the events that occurred, new facts are introduced to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Although Frankenstein uses multiple narrators to tell the story, it is important to look at the effects it might have on the stories accuracy. In this essay, I will closely examine the motives, differences, and similarities of each narrator to see what influences, if any, they have on the narrative.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores the concepts of knowledge and science and the dangers involved with the pursuit and investigation of these ideas. The novel conveys Shelley’s attitudes towards science by portraying it as having the capability to exceed the bounds of human restraint. Through the development of her protagonist Victor Frankenstein, the romantic and gothic aspects of her novel, the period of 1818 and the influences of the world she was living in that

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a fantastic representation of humanity, passion, and hubris. The book contains themes about the sublime qualities of nature, the disruption of nature, the ethics of scientific advancement, and much more, all signs of a classic Romantic era novel. First, it is apt to discuss the idea of “not disturbing nature”. A lot of times in the Romantic age, it was expounded upon that nature is sublime, or almost godlike, and that essentially it should be left alone.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a typical literary work from the Romantic Era as it contains characteristics of this period, especially nature. As the Romantics found comfort and solace in the nature, Victor Frankenstein seeks nature to strengthen his spirits and to relax. He knows that nature has a healing power that can end his suffering. The monster heads to nature too because he is seen as an ugly creature so he goes as far as he can to be in isolation and this isolation affects him physically and emotionally.

“But Sorrow Only Increased with Knowledge:” A Critique on Romantic Ideals in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Nature is very important to romantics; it is a departure from the enlightened ideals of study and the “classroom” environment. Dr. Victor Frankenstein shows a great appreciation of nature through diction, especially through Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime. Burke’s article, On the Sublime, defines sublimity in relation to nature, “astonishing [...] with a degree of horror”, which is a feeling Dr. Frankenstein frequently describes when he is in nature. In one passage, Frankenstein uses the words, “troubled”, “awful majesty”, “wonderful and stupendous”, “vast” and “glittering” (Shelley 101). These words resemble the “sublime” by combining the beauty of nature and the terror it’s vastness brings, just as Burke illustrates. Shelley also uses imagery. Imagery portrays the beauty that the character’s see in nature to the reader. One instance of

In Shelley’s novel Frankenstein the Romantic ideals and Gothic characteristics are portrayed by having the aspects of nature but also having mysterious actions to it. Nature is portrayed in the

In this assessment I will be critically evaluating the use of Romantic forms and themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). The discussion will focus on a radical interpretation of the text; an interpretation that views the novel as a response to the social injustice and cruel treatment of the masses in this period, and the conservative explanation for the text; where the creature personifies the monstrous consequences for attempting to overthrow the capitalist elite. Romanticism, a period from the late 18th Century to the mid-19th Century, is a contradictory movement; a product of middle class elites who are concerned with the struggles of the lower working class. Terry Eagleton states, “committed to an art as an end to itself yet also an instrument of social regeneration… If the movement contains some of the most fervent advocates of the French Revolution, it also contains some of its most rabid antagonists.” It has been argued that the movement is a response to the Dual Revolution (industrial and political), and artists used this period to remember the past, while simultaneously showcase their frustration at the present. Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre (2001) argue that romanticism is “a vast cultural movement of protest against modern industry and capitalist society in the name of pre-modern values”.