Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And The Romantic Era

Victor Frankenstein in the book Frankenstein faces many terrible situations and has to face many consequences for trying to play God’s role in creating life. Victor seen and dealt with many situations as a young boy that will lead to his madness and obsession with science. Victor has always been intrigued with science and life ever since he was a boy. He studied natural science endlessly trying to master how to create a creature that could sustained life. When Victor finally creates his creature, he becomes disgusted with how it turns out. Victor runs from his creation failing to teach him any social or moral qualities. The creature haunts Victor killing many of his family and friends. Victor will try to run from the many problems he has caused. This causes Victor’s misery throughout the book. Victor becomes the true murderer in the book for trying to play God and create life with science.

Throughout Frankenstein, Victor proves to be quite an egotistical person. Victor’s actions will sometimes be selfish and not as noble as he would like others to believe. He creates the monster with a desire to obtain awe and fame and to make sure that his name will be remembered throughout history. “… a light so brilliant and wondrous… that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (Shelley 37). While this discovery of Victor’s may be groundbreaking, he fails to think of the negative consequences, only thinking of himself and what this could potentially

Victor uses his knowledge not for the benefit of society, but for his own purpose of experimentation which ends up turning out the opposite way that he imagines. Knowing his own vanity, Victor says "lean from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (Shelley 38). After creating the monster and all the hardships Victor had to go through, he realizes that a person should be happy with the world around him/her and not try to change it. He admits that trying to become a man greater than who he could be drove him mad and his knowledge went in tow with it. From

Over two centuries ago, Mary Shelley created a gruesome tale of the horrific ramifications that result when man over steps his bounds and manipulates nature. In her classic tale, Frankenstein, Shelley weaves together the terrifying implications of a young scientist playing God and creating life, only to be haunted for the duration of his life by the monster of his own sordid creation. Reading Shelley in the context of present technologically advanced times, her tale of monstrous creation provides a very gruesome caution. For today, it is not merely a human being the sciences are lusting blindly to bring to life, as was the deranged quest of Victor Frankenstein, but rather to

Victor Frankenstein was a regular scientist until he became obsessed and mentally ill. “This state of mind preyed upon my health… all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation-deep, dark, deathlike solitude” (Shelley 77). Mary Shelley created the character Victor, who devoted most of his time, research, and effort into creating a being which can hold life. Victor became successful, yet mentally scarred after the sight of his creature. This hurt Victor, but not as harshly as the creature's following actions. The creature goes on to kill members of Victor’s family and kill his closest and dearest friends. The creature’s actions cause Victor to suffer both mentally and physically. Victor then falls back

The 1800s was a time of change politically, economically, and personally for many citizens. Because of rapid change in power many rules were put in place, changed, neglected as well as rebelled. More specifically, when an individual committed a crime, back then they had different ways of going about the punishment. Some would see their ways as sexist and biased, whereas others thought it was completely reasonable. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein there are a series of unexpected deaths in the story. The first one however, one of the more critical ones because the characters and the audience is not sure who is responsible. As the characters debate who is the murderer, punishments and explanations change

This need of power led Victor to create what he believed would be a beautiful human being. But he failed to see that combining the most beautiful human features does not necessarily create a beautiful human being. He was inspired by scientists who ...acquired new and almost limitless powers... (Shelley, Frankenstein, P. 47). Victor sought this unlimited power to the extent of taking the role of God. He not only penetrated nature, but also he assumed power of reproduction in a maniacal desire to harness these modes of reproduction in order to become acknowledged, respected, and obeyed as a father. While bringing his creation into the world he was himself alienated from society, and isolated himself from the community. Isolation and parental neglect cause viciousness within man. Because of his upbringing, Victor had no sense of empathy, and therefore could not realize the potential harm he was creating towards himself and his creation. The sole purpose of his project was an attempt to gain power, but instead of power Victor realized that a morally irresponsible scientific development could release a monster that can destroy human civilization.

Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker

Sometimes considered one of the first science fiction novels of supernatural terror, Frankenstein proved itself an instant success when released anonymously in 1818. The mad scientist Victor Frankenstein and his creation provoke readers with the fear of the unknown and the power of natures forces. A deeper look into the character of Victor Frankenstein, the role of scientific experimentation and the intricate settings of nature in which the story evolves, prove Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein , a worthy example of both Romantic and Gothic representation in nineteenth century British Literature.

According to the Romantics, whose firm beliefs in the power of nature stemmed from the rise of destruction and injustice brought about by the industrial revolution; the natural surrounds carried unfathomable power in the ability to cleanse ones soul and restore them to well being. Victor embodies this Romantic belief throughout Frankenstein, where he constantly retreats to his natural surroundings to restore his personal happiness and health. Overcome with grave illness Victor acknowledges upon recovery he “gained additional strength from the salubrious air” he breathed, that nature, not the care of his friend Clerval, restored him to full health. The use of the word “salubrious” reinforces the intention of promoting the Romantic belief that

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is looked upon by many experts as a work in which descibes the romantic period. The Romantic period was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. In Frankenstein there are many romantic characteristics, for example; the power of nature. Nature is one of the most important factors in Frankenstein because Victor Frankenstein , the protagonist, defies the laws of nature by bringing the dead back to life. Once he successfully created the monster he himself regrets going against nature because his creation wasn’t the result he was wishing for due to the lacking of understatement it had , “these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with…his

Victor feels that his relentless search for more knowledge is the cause for all of his suffering. It is true that his knowledge is what created the creature, but what made things worse is that he never gave the creature what he needed, so the neglected creature set out to find it himself. Victor’s tragic fate was not the result of his knowledge but because he did not take care of his creature. 6. Foreshadowing is seen multiple times such as the night when Victor sees lightning strike down a tree and Victor is fascinated with how much power the lighting has. The monster also foreshadows his own death when saying, “But soon I shall die.. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames..” 7. By not giving his creation a name, Victor didn’t give his creature an identity or a place in society. In society, a person’s name is who they are, people make their own judgment of people right away. The creature didn’t have a name and people judged him right away and identified him as monster and only that, rather than an actual being. 8. During the period in which Frankenstein was written, science was growing and it was seen as anything could be possible with the new research and

The world around us holds so many different things. There is the natural beauty of nature, found in waterfalls, and forests, deserts and beaches, that help us to appreciate where we come from. There is the supernatural, almost the exact opposite, being something that we either envy and want or despise and fear, such as witches and vampires, superheroes and magic. Everything we feel as people, as individuals plays into what we want and how we act. All of these things are aspects of Romanticism, which we can see in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The romantic period was characterized by a marked withdraw from the techniques of the literary period and ideas, that introduced more rational and scientific in nature. Romantic poetry and prose, by contrast, was intended to express a new and visionary relationship to the imagination (Fitch). The romantic poets were always seeking a way to capture and represent the sublime moment and experience (Fitch), the more personal experience, the better. In many romantic poems the authors and their writing are identical. This is one of the ways Shelly embraces the literary period and at the same time matches the specific romantic ideal. She takes Frankenstein and describes him not by her personal experience or in her own voice, but yet she still is still characterizing a single quest to achieve the sublime. Victor Frankenstein’s quest was to make a creature out of raw