Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

For some biological reason we have the desire to be scared, Howard Philips Lovecraft
(1890-1937) wrote an essay and treatise on fear , called “ Supernatural Horror in
Literature” the intro of it recites: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear
of the unknown . The very long period in English literature called English
Neoclassicism includes the age of Enlightenment (1660-1789), also called Age of
Reason which is the Augustanian age. It is called neoclassicism since it was a period in
which there was a rebirth of classical culture. Like Horace, Virgil and Ovid they were
trying to imitate them by bringing back the values.Age of common sense, moderation,
temperance, reason and rationality, It was all about the dominance of the intellect.
Denial of passion , irrationality and feelings. The age of sensibility (1745-1798) was a
crossing point for the age that follows , which is Romanticism (1798-1832) . Then the
Victorian age (1832–1901) followed by Graveyard Poetry (1740–50) the way for
romanticism , thanks to authors like Thomas Gray and Edward Young. They found
inspirations in graveyards , threatening subjects like life and death, immortality, and
moral instruction was in vogue. The values of Neoclassicism are: traditionalism ,
distrust of innovation and originality, respect for the imitation of classical writers,
rules and models. The values of Romanticism are: innovation, originality, the
supernatural , the far away and the long away, feelings , dreams and imagination.

Romantic and gothic literaure have some common ground , apart from the same
period , the interest in medievalism , the supernatural.Gothic novels are a subgenre.
The connotation of the word gothic was largely associated with barbarous ,
unsophisticated , medieval, the supernatural and the architecture. Within the
atmosphere of the gothic novel was born during the transition from the age of
sensibility to romanticism. It is a novel of terror and suspense very fashionable within
1790-1820, set in the past ( especially medieval times ) and foreign countries ( Italy ,
Spain and catholic countries ) It ended with the publication of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein: ambience like dark woods , monasteries, churches, full moon, prisons,
secret underground passages, sense of claustrophobia - being buried alive- .The forces
of nature to create a mood and atmosphere was a gothic fiction innovation. The villain
figure is the most important, attractive and interesting, and essential , more than a
hero. Strawberry castle is where the first gothic novel brought back the dream and the
interest of Gothic.

It is a new genre, inspiring many imitations, many developments. The Castle of

Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally held to be the first gothic
novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later
18th century and early 19th century.In the second edition the subtitle added “a gothic
story”.The protagonist is called Manfred and he’s the prince of Otranto, he is not the
real heir. Walpole founded a new kind of fiction , he created a new subgenre. The use
of the gothic castle was new. Gothic devices are evident in stereotyped characters ,
young innocent women persecuted , imprisoned in this castle. The plot is
overcomplicated and illogical, consequently so criticized.Another important novels
are Ann Rafcliffe’s the mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Udolpho is a castle, it take places
in Italy there is a great landscape, the supernatural is explained at the end in order to
not scare readers.Matthew Lewis’The Monk (1796) is placed in Madrid in the 1600, the
organist is a monk called Ambrogio, he becomes kind of evil. He is tempted , he is
human, weak, he is falling into evil , he kills his mother, raped his sister, represented
in a sexual repression.

The most important English gothic novelist was Mary Shelley.Shewas born on 30th
August 1797 in London, from a progressive family; her father was William Godwin, a
philosopher, journalist and writer, her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, a philosopher
and pioneer of the feminist movement who sadly died during the delivery of her little
daughter due to an infection causing her a high fever.Mary Wollstonecraft, her
mother, was a modelist, an educational writer and a passionate feminist. She wrote
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792). She was trying to find a fundamental change in women’s world,
fighting against the “second-rate place” of women in the society. According to her,
they weren’t naturally submissive to men.

Her father's house was often frequented by intellectuals such as William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge etc. in fact it was said that as a child she often liked to hide
away and listen to the conversations and recitations of works for example “The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner'' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which influenced one of her
greatest work “Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus”. In 1814, at the age of 17
years old, she met the Romantic poet and writer Percy Shelley, an admirer of her
father William Godwin and also one of the many intellectuals and poets who often
frequented their home. The two young people began a secret relationship (this was
because Percy was married with two children) by meeting secretly near the grave of
Mary's mother, a place much loved by her. In 1816 the two lovers went to Switzerland
with Mary's stepsister, Claire, who was having a relationship with the poet Lord Byron.
In Villa Diodati, during long rainy evenings, the group of friends, including John
Polidori, an English writer, doctor and Byron's friend, entertained each other with
horror stories, so that was how Mary Shelley invented her work “Frankenstein”. Mary
Shelley could do horror without supernatural or medieval novels based on
experiments, highly philosophical . The first science fiction novel : Frankensteinis
never called doctor , he is a student Robert Louis Stevenson : Dr Jackie and Mr Hyde-
In the city we have scientist , criminal and the figure of the double and the concept of
doppelganger. The evil in you.Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is almost set in her
contemporary age, and it’s all based on science. Victor Frankenstein is NOT a doctor,
he is a student, and the monster he creates has no name. She speculates on morality,
it’s a high philosophical novel; it is the first science fiction novel.

Frankenstein is also called “The Modern Prometheus'' because in Greek mythology

Prometheus defied the Olympian gods by giving men fire against Zeus' order. For this
reason, Prometheus was punished for the betrayal. The student Victor Frankenstein is
compared with Prometheus because he too defies God by wanting to prove with his
experiment that he is not the only one who can create life, Frankenstein also wants to
give mankind knowledge and power that is considered forbidden. But, like
Prometheus, he too is punished, but this time by his own creation, which proves to be
a failed experiment. If Prometheus is the hero of his story and gets the happy ending,
Frankenstein is a victim of his own ambition that also indirectly condemns the people
close to him. There are many theories about the influences working upon Mary
Shelley's imagination at the time, for example, Mary Shelley grew up during the age of
the body snatchers, the only legal source of bodies for dissection was the gallows –
dissection played an essential part in medical training, helping students to learn about
human anatomy, and there were the anatomists who offered money to gangs of body
snatchers, who went out at night to dig up the freshly buried dead. This inspired Mary
Shelley to write an epistolary, gothic, horror story and publish it in 1818 anonymously
because if she published it under her own name it was unbecoming of a woman.