Frankenstein Romanticism Analysis

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, uses romantic and gothic elements to create a universal novel, providing readers insight to the Romantic Era. Shelley provides the romantic elements of the celebration of nature and social conventions, along with the gothic elements of suspense, isolation, and the supernatural.

The Romantic Period, originating in Europe during the late 1700’s, was a time of spirituality and emotion in response against the previous Enlightenment; a time period where reason and material wealth were highly valued. During this period, literature consisted of gothic, sentimental, romance, and nature themes and styles. Writings use elevated language to provide romantic elements such as emotions above logic, nature as truth, the supernatural,

Frankenstein is a novel written by Mary Shelley, telling Victor Frankenstein’s tale as he creates life through science. The first edition of Frankenstein was published during 1818. There is conflict regarding the genre of the novel, as it holds gothic, romantic, and science fiction elements. The story begins with the Robert Walton, a lonely, self educated man, writing to his sister. By Chapter One, the story takes on the point of view of Victor Frankenstein, the son of a wealthy man and woman with two brothers. Victor has a childhood companion named Elizabeth, whom he eventually marries. Victor leaves Geneva to attend the university at Ingolstadt, where he is scolded by a professor on his “wasted” studies of alchemy. Victor begins to study natural sciences, excelling in his

Juxtaposing this romantic element is Victor Frankenstein, who holds enlightenment-themed-ideals, resulting in his transgression against mother nature. On the night of the creatures birth, the weather is shown as dark and dreary, symbolizing the evil and supernatural in Victor’s actions. As Jonathan Blake so eloquently states, “once Frankenstein brings the Creature to life, his own eyes become ‘insensible to the charms of nature’. His nightmare immediately after the creation is of the destruction of the feminine principle of nature: he imagines that on kissing his beautiful beloved Elizabeth, she is transformed into the corpse of his dead mother. By going against the natural process of generation, by making a child of his own without submission to the fecundity of a woman’s womb, he symbolically kills mother nature. His subsequent story veers wildly between moments of restoration to and by nature in its pure mountain form and further severances of environmental belonging.” (478). By attempting to cheat death with science and knowledge, Victor himself seals his fate. The creature, however, is born into the world just as innocent and naive as any other. He begins survival by eating berries and sheltering himself with foliage. The creature represents a more humane human, containing fundamental morals such as love and peace. Because of his arrival into a time with advanced