Assignment 3. Frankenstein As a Gothic Novel

  This blog is part of an assignment for the paper 103 - Literature of the Romantics, Sem - 1, 2022.

PERSONAL INFORMATION:-

Name:- Bhavyata Dhirajbhai Kukadiya 

Batch:- M.A. Sem 1 (2022-2024)

Enrollment Number:- 4069206420220018

E-mail Address:- bhavyatakukadiya@gmail.com

Roll Number:- 5

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS:-

Topic:-  Frankenstein As a Gothic Novel 

Paper & subject code:- 103 -Literature of the Romantics  & 22394

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar 

Date of Submission:- 7th November, 2022

Frankenstein As a Gothic Novel:

Mary Shelley

Also known as    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (née)

Occupation    Novelist

Born    30 August 1797, Somers Town, London, England

Died    1 February 1851, Chester Square, London, England

Literary period    Romantic

  

Mary Shelley is an English novelist whose work has reached all corners of the globe. Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Shelley was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth.

Familiar to scholars, librarians and the entire literary world, the novel tells the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein and a creature he creates in an unorthodox scientific experiment. It was an instant wonder and spawned a mythology all of its own that endures to this day.

After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.

In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53.

Introduction:

Frankenstein is by no means the first Gothic novel. Instead, this novel is a compilation of Romantic and 

Gothic elements combined into a singular work with an unforgettable story. The Gothic novel is unique 

because by the time Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, several novels had appeared using Gothic 

themes, but the genre had only been around since 1754.

The gothic genre in literature focuses on the mysterious, the exotic, and the supernatural. Gothic literature originally began from its focus on medieval settings, such as castles with secret passages, hidden panels, and trap doors; ancient ruins; underground passageways; dark, mysterious moors; and foggy, derelict graveyards.

Supernatural beings: ghosts, monsters, vampires, and witches populate much of gothic fiction.

Plot conventions: secrets, revenge, and curses are common plot features.

Outcast protagonist: the protagonist is often lonely, isolated, and flawed.

Themes: supernatural themes of curses, hauntings, family secrets, looming threats, and psychological horror abound in gothic fiction.

While the original gothic genre died out in the early 1800s, many writers have continued its tradition, bringing gothic elements into their more modern stories. Some of these writers include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Charles Dickens.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is most decidedly a gothic novel. Though it was written after the genre's peak, it is still considered to be one of the premier novels of gothic fiction. The story is about Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he creates. While studying medicine at university, Victor becomes interested in life and death and how he might thwart death by creating life. He sets out to reanimate a dead body. However, when his experiments prove successful, Victor becomes horrified at the monster he has created and flees in terror, abandoning the monster. Desolate and alone, the monster determines to take revenge on his creator by killing his family. Eventually, the monster catches up to Victor and demands that his story be told. The monster demands that Victor create a mate for him, but when Victor goes back on this promise, the monster renews his vow to destroy his creator.

Mary Shelley‟s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus can be placed somewhere in between the ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, directed towards the Romantic movement. As mentioned above Frankenstein contains numerous Gothic elements, in the following some of which are going to be discussed further.

 Definition:

Gothic fiction is a “type of novel or romance popular in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The word ‘gothic’ has come to mean ‘wild’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘crude’[…] The plots hinged on 

suspense and mystery, involving the fantastic and the supernatural.”4 

In A Dictionary of Literary Terms, A. J. Cuddon tells us that the gothic novel was “a 

type of romance very popular late in the 18th c. and at the beginning of the 19th, which had a 

considerable influence on fiction science.”6 Martin Gray brings some precisions when he 

says:

Works with a similarly obsessive, gloomy, violent and spine-

chilling atmosphere, but not necessarily with a medieval setting, 

are also called Gothic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), for 

example. Indeed any work concentrating on the bizarre, the 

macabre or aberrant psychological states may be called Gothic. In 

this sense Gothic elements are common in much nineteenth and 

twentieth-century fiction.

7

Gothic Elements in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

There are numerous gothic elements in Frankenstein, including wild and exotic settings, the dark secret carried by the main character, the looming threat of the monster, and the destruction of the family. Shelley also expands on the genre, adding an element of existential terror with the destruction of the boundary between life and death. She incorporated new, yet little-understood, science into her story, lending an air of potential reality to the horror.

The Setting

The setting is a key element in gothic fiction. It is often dark, desolate, foreboding, and lonely. Much of the story happens at night, often only by moonlight or on moonless, stormy nights. In Frankenstein, Victor must use the energy from a thunderstorm to shock life into his creature, and it is on this dark, stormy night that he first sees what he has done and the horror he has created. Later in the book, when the monster again finds his creator, Victor sees the creature "by the light of the moon," thus creating the association of darkness with evil and the monster.

Additionally, when the monster is chased away from society, he goes to live alone in the mountains of the Swiss Alps. While the scenery is beautiful, it is also isolated and foreboding, further enhancing the loneliness and desolation of the monster.

Victor's Secret:

Secrets are a key convention of gothic fiction. Oftentimes, the secret is a terrible misdeed or a long-standing family shame that must remain buried but still threatens to come to light. There are several secrets in Frankenstein, starting with Victor's graverobbing to obtain the body parts he needs for his dark experiments, which are in themselves another secret.

Additionally, Frankenstein has a secret that is different from other stories. In this novel, the secret is a living, breathing thing, the monster, that refuses to remain hidden. This secret will reveal itself rather than be uncovered by someone else.

Shadows and Danger:

Another convention of gothic fiction is the shadowy, dark danger of a looming threat, often something hidden in the gloom that lurks and stalks and watches. The suspense is created in not knowing what this terrible threat might be until it is suddenly and terrifyingly exposed.

Creation of Monster:

IIn Frankenstein, the hero decides to invent a creature that will resemble 

a human being. He says: “I resolved […] to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to 

say, about eight feet in height, and proportionally large.”(p.25) He starts assembling 

materials: “I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the 

tremendous secrets of the human frame. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house 

furnished many of my materials.” (p.26) The reader witnesses the creation of the monster in 

chapter 5. The weather is queer, it is raining, the narrator is anxious. The operation takes place 

in a “dreary night”(p.27). The time is symbolic: “It was already one in the morning”(p.27)

The narrator describes the coming into life of the monster:

I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, 

and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. […] His limbs were in 

proportion […] His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of 

muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and 

flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only 

formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed 

almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they 

were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

Science

In the late 18th and early 19th century, at the time as Horror fiction emerges, scientific technologies are progressing fast and to a great degree. Charles Darwin‟s Evolution Theory is only one of the numerous modern scientific approaches. This progress proceeds in combination with the Industrial Revolution and the newly originated ways of production. With the accompanying societal changes it causes social instability and fear of the unknown sciences and their extents and consequences on humanity and the individual. Therefore it offers another suitable theme for the Gothic novel.12

In Frankenstein science is the origin and cause for the whole plot and supernatural happenings. Victor Frankenstein stands for the “archetypal mad scientist”. He is very interested in physics and physical phenomena. Since childhood he “delighted in investigating [the] causes [of magnificent appearances]. The world was to [him] a secret which [he] desired to 13 divine.”   

After studying chemistry in the University of Ingolstadt he applies to physiology.13

Conclusion:

Mary Shelley uses many gothic elements in Frankenstein. She incorporates the destruction of family via revenge and the blurring of the line between life and death. She also ties in secrets threatening to be revealed and horror elements such as corpses, reanimation, and dark scientific experiments.Gothic settings involve dark, creepy locales that emphasize the idea of isolation and desolation. Abandoned castles, secret tunnels and passageways, and dark, misty moors are common. The setting in Frankenstein uses dark, stormy nights and isolated and run-down locations, such as Victor Frankenstein's lab and the abandoned and lonely castle in the Swiss Alps where the monster goes to hide

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