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Mary shelley frankenstein gothic literature
Gothic elements in the creation of the monster BY MARY SHELLEY
Mary shelley frankenstein gothic literature
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During the 1780s through the 1830s, fiction endeavored for literary legitimacy. There were two classes of readers: the articulate classes and the reading public. The articulate class included well-educated men. The reading public included women, the working class, and the older folks. Women would enjoy steamy romance novels written by other women; women were new to the world of literature. For the first time, they were literate. Fiction needed to be defined and legitimized. Mary Shelley wrote many types of fiction including Gothic, romance, and Jacobin, and the realistic novel. Realistic novels told about realistic events in modern times. These stories made women writers seem more justified in their writings. If they could tell the story while …show more content…
Gothic writing revolves around wicked, amazing, and sometimes destructive people, objects, or events. Mayhem erupted the eighteenth century due to major changes in politics, economics, and social norms. Much of Gothic literature was caused by these disturbances. Gothic literature valued the past with its ideas of aristocratic strength, passion, barbarity, and magic. The term “Gothic” was originally used to describe architecture, however, Horace Walpole used “Gothic” as a way to describe his story. The story outlined a new kind of fiction that involved superstition and apparitions. The Castle of Ontario was the first Gothic literature story. It had a medieval setting where ghosts would bring messages of surprise. Walpole’s ghosts were very realistic. Readers were frightened by the human-like characteristics that the ghost possessed. It was truly a thriller. Walpole opened the door for authors, as well as people, to use their voices to do the impossible (Emandi, 2013, pp. 1-3). Mary Shelley knew much about Gothic literature. The Gothic genre was around almost fifty years before Frankenstein was even written. She was surrounded by people who had many strong political views. Undoubtedly, Shelley had several ideas brewing in her mind. However, she was limited to what she could write and how she could write her stories. Part of Mary Shelley's success is due the women authors that came before her. During the nineteenth century, two women authors gave leeway for Shelley to write her thoughts. Authors Jonna Baillie and Charlotte Dacre wrote stories of terror that were very imaginative, lacked morality, and held the upmost intensity. Even these women were new comers to Gothic literature. They had to find new ways to write about terror. Shelley faced many of the same issues. She was late in the Gothic literature game; however, her writings would be one of the
Gothic texts are typically characterized by a horrifying and haunting mood, in a world of isolation and despair. Most stories also include some type of supernatural events and/or superstitious aspects. Specifically, vampires, villains, heroes and heroines, and mysterious architecture are standard in a gothic text. Depending upon the author, a gothic text can also take on violent and grotesque attributes. As an overall outlook, “gothic literature is an outlet for the ancient fears of humanity in an age of reason” (Sacred-Texts). Following closely to this type of literature, Edgar Allan Poe uses a gloomy setting, isolation, and supernatural occurrences throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
In what follows, my research paper will rely on an article by Kathy Prendergast entitled “Introduction to The Gothic Tradition”. The significance of this article resides in helping to recapitulate the various features of the Gothic tradition. In this article the authoress argues that in order to overturn the Enlightenment and realistic literary mores, many of the eighteenth century novelists had recourse to traditional Romantic conventions in their works of fiction, like the Arthurian legendary tales (Prendergast).
Word by word, gothic literature is bound to be an immaculate read. Examining this genre for what it is could be essential to understanding it. “Gothic” is relating to the extinct East Germanic language, people of which known as the Goths. “Literature” is defined as a written work, usually with lasting “artistic merit.” Together, gothic literature combines the use of horror, death, and sometimes romance. Edgar Allan Poe, often honored with being called the king of horror and gothic poetry, published “The Fall of House Usher” in September of 1839. This story, along with many other works produced by Poe, is a classic in gothic literature. In paragraph nine in this story, one of our main characters by the name of Roderick Usher,
Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the very first women to champion equal rights. After her mother’s success with feminism, eventually freedom for women had enabled her to gain authority to her own novel and she was able to republish the novel under her own name in 1831.
The literary elements of remote and desolate settings, a metonymy of gloom and horror, and women in distress, clearly show “Frankenstein” to be a Gothic Romantic work. Mary Shelley used this writing style to effectively allow the reader to feel Victor Frankenstein’s regret and wretchedness. In writing “Frankenstein” Mary Shelley wrote one the most popular Gothic Romantic novels of all time.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is hailed as one of the greatest novels dealing with the human spirit ever to be written. Shelley wrote this nineteenth century sensation after her life experiences. It has been called the first science fiction novel. Shelley lived a sad, melodramatic, improbable, and tragically sentimental life. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the brilliant pioneer feminist in the late eighteenth century. However due to complications in childbirth and inept medical care, Shelley's mother passed away soon after her birth. Later on, Shelley married the famous romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley's masterpiece, Frankenstein, was inspired partly by Milton's Paradise Lost:
Gothic literature was developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth century of the Gothic era when war and controversy was too common. It received its name after the Gothic architecture that was becoming a popular trend in the construction of buildings. As the buildings of daunting castles and labyrinths began, so did the beginning foundation of Gothic literature. The construction of these buildings will later become an obsession with Gothic authors. For about 300 years before the Renaissance period, the construction of these castles and labyrinths continued, not only in England, but also in Gothic stories (Landau 2014). Many wars and controversies, such as the Industrial Revolution and Revolutionary War, were happening at this time, causing the Gothic literature to thrive (“Gothic Literature” 2011). People were looking for an escape from the real world and the thrill that Gothic literature offered was exactly what they needed. Gothic literature focuses on the horrors and the dark sides to the human brain, such as in Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein. Gothic literature today, as well as in the past, has been able to separate itself apart from other types of literature with its unique literary devices used to create fear and terror within the reader.
Although the language throughout the book stays true to its era, many of the ideas and imagery portrayed through it were too chilling to be conceivable in those times. It may have been that because Mary’s mother was the first feminist, Mary felt it was acceptable to ‘rebel’ against society with this terrifying book. It was apparently conceived by a nightmare, and written to win a competition with friends. However, it may have been the rebellious feminist traits in her blood that made her wish for it to be published. Mary Shelley seemed to be quite similar to Frankenstein in many ways.
The term ‘Gothic’ conjures a range of possible meanings, definitions and associations. It explicitly denotes certain historical and cultural phenomena. Gothicism was part of the Romantic Movement that started in the eighteenth century and lasted about three decades into the nineteenth century. For this essay, the definition of Gothic that is applicable is: An 18th century literary style characterized by gloom and the supernatural. In the Gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a wide range of issues are explored. Frankenstein represents an entirely new vision of the female Gothic, along with many other traditional themes such as religion, science, colonialism and myth.
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 than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.
As a young writer, at just the age of 18 years old, Mary Shelley was able to become a gothic novel specialist. She was able to create a story that has an unbelievable amount of depth behind all of the events that happen between the characters. Her writing stays relevant in today’s society due to her focus on the creation of artificial life. Many of the characters in the novel Frankenstein have a deep love and desire for new discoveries. The characters like Walton, the Creature and Victor have the desire for ambition which they all become overly consumed in their works and end up in destructive situations. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley is able to develop multiple characters whose ambitions lead to destruction;
When authors write a story they “tell a particular story to a particular audience in a particular situation for, presumably, a particular purpose” (Phelan 4). Northanger Abbey and Frankenstein came out in the same year, were both gothic novels, and were both written by female authors. Despite these similarities, the two authors produced very different works of fiction and have very different authorial intentions for their stories. Austen and Shelley both use gothic elements to portray their purpose for their stories. The two authors create characters exhibiting powerful emotions and moralize through the usage of these emotions.
The period of the gothic novel, in which the key gothic texts were produced, is commonly considered to be roughly between 1760 and 1820. A period that extended from what is accepted as the first gothic novel, Horace Walpoles The Castle of Otranto ( 1764 ), to Charles Maturins Melmoth the Wanderer ( 1820 ) and included the first edition of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein in 1818. In general, the gothic novel has been associated with a rebellion against constraining neoclassical aesthetic ideals of order and unity, in order to recover a suppressed primitive and barbaric imaginative freedom ( Kilgour, 1995, p3 ). It is also often considered to be a premature ( and thus somewhat crude ) manifestation of the emerging values of Romanticism. Although the gothic genre is somewhat shadowy and difficult to define it can be seen as having a number of characteristics or conventions which can be observed in Frankenstein including stereotypical settings, characters and plots, an interest in the sublime, the production of excessive emotion in the reader ( particularly that of terror and horror), an emphasis on suspense, the notion of the double and the presence of the supernatural. (Kilgour, 1995; Botting, 1996 ; Byron, 1998 : p71 )
Mary Shelley was born 1797 in London, to her influential father William Godwin, and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft who died giving birth to her. Growing up Mary was educated and tutored by her father, and because of his reputation she was surrounded by intellectuals during the Industrial Revolution. At the age of sixteen, Mary ran away to live with her future husband Percy Shelley, a free thinker that her father did not approve of. Her marriage with Percy ultimately leads to turmoil in Shelly’s relationship with her father. Mary spent the summer of 1816 in a Geneva with her husband Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. The group decided to write a ghost story which eventually led to Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein: The modern Prometheus. The novel would be defined a...
It was especially important that she was a woman and was able to show that women can write about any topic a man can write. Mary Shelley continued her mother’s legacy by using literature to break down walls and standards for women. Mary Shelley used grotesque and dark ideas and molded it into a fantastic literary creation that is still well known and read today. She managed to use vivid allusions to detail her novel,“Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred” (Pg. 133, Frankenstein). Her choice of words and imagery painted an intense picture of the sorrows and madness of Victor Frankenstein and his creature. His creature was rejected by society and his creator because of his grotesque appearance and physical deformities and was left to forge for himself. Over time, the creature became consumed in his loneliness and turned his sadness into anger and waged war on Victor and mankind. Mary Wollstonecraft is related to Mary Shelley by more than just blood, but also a common goal for the change in society and the push for feminism and equal