Romanticism In Frankenstein

Romanticism can be characterised by the attitudes of the authors when referring to childhood in their literature, it is on this basis I will argue that the views of the authors were felt strongly and not shown in a positive light.

William Wordsworth states in the preface to Lyrical Ballads that,

‘For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also thought long and deeply’

Romanticism was a highly popular movement created in the 1700s compiling of famous poets such as Percy B. Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake, who

The notion that the monster became a surrogate son is a fair assumption to make for the reader. Victor discusses an idyllic lifestyle growing up in Geneva that had become tainted with his desire to find the ‘secrets of heaven and earth’ after the death of his mother. The death of Victor’s mother would become the catalyst for him wanting to find the secret to life, subsequently culminating in a dream sequence after creating the Creature in which he sees his mother ‘and I thought I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms’ The death of his mother symbolically could relate to the future loss of the Creature’s father figure Victor and give insight into Mary Shelley’s personal life and mental state after suffering tragic deaths herself. This desire would allow him to venture into the world of science and eventually create his own monster made up of cadavers. The Creature is introduced as a new-born who needs love and adoration from his creator and master, this need for love proves to be the ultimate drive that causes the obsessional need for The Creature to find Victor and make him feel pain regardless of the consequences. The beginning introduction of The Creature shows childlike innocence ‘He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he

In response to the rejection, The Creature resorts back to a childish state and grows increasingly unhinged and angry, eventually murdering Victor’s younger brother William and Justine. This is an essential part of the novel as it allows the reader to understand The Creatures need for a childhood as he had not been taught moral implications and the effects it can have on a person, instead relying on natural animalistic nature and childish ignorance. He cannot bring himself to kill Victor and so instead hurts the ones closest to him, to get him to pay attention to him and in vengeance for the cruel rejection he placed on The Creature for merely being