Jacob McKinnis Professor Bess Fox
Major Women Writers
3 November 2015
Romanticism in Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, is well known throughout the world as a classic piece of gothic literature with elements of disturbing and macabre imagery. It is easy then to overlook the many ways in which Frankenstein is a primary example of Romanticism due to the characteristics of the way it was written and the time period in which Mary Shelley lived. Shelley’s Frankenstein is not meant to be looked at as a purely gothic piece of literature but rather a literary work of Romanticism that masquerades as a horror story. To start with, the monster created by Frankenstein is paramount to the representation of Romanticism in the novel. The monster is a Romantic hero because of the rejection it must bear from normal society. Wherever he goes, the monster is chased away because of its hideous appearance and its huge size. Shelley makes an effort explaining how often that people in conventional society reject that which is out of the ordinary or that which is unnerving and disfigured treading on the borders of our society. It’s hard to blame the monster for what happens to him, and Shelley provokes from the reader a sympathetic response for a creature that has been established as a misunderstood and lost soul in a world it was never meant to live in. The monster tries to fit into a regular community, but because it is grotesque to look at and does not know the social norms, he can never become part of mainstream society. The monster's response is to overcompensate for his lack of learning and then shun all human contact except when it is necessary to have it. The monster is a depiction of what happens when something that can be seen as strange or out of the ordinary enters a world that has established society, laws, and preconceived notions of man and God. The monster is the antithesis to modern society and therefore it does not belong and must be expelled from the world. When the monster says “I am alone and miserable: man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.” (129) it knows that since normal society will forever bar it from inclusion, it must be with something else that can provide it with companionship that it needs so it demands to have another being created like it. Shelley’s humanization of the monster provides the reader with a reason to feel empathy towards it and to feel as though the monster was treated unfairly despite it’s horrible actions which could have been prevented if humans took the time to accept that which is out of the ordinary. This is an example of a Romantic element and the monster is a Romantic hero because of how the events of the story make the inhuman monster gain human emotions and how the story focuses on the individual’s quest for finding a sense of belonging. The individual’s strife is one of the main aspects of Romanticism.
Readers do not often spot the reflection the novel has on modern society as they pay attention to the more gothic aspects of the story without realizing that Shelley incorporates Romanticism into these gothic traits. The most common aspect of Shelly’s literary work that makes it a Romanticist’s novel is the characters desires to explore the unknown. The darker, more gothic elements of the book make share Romanticist qualities in that they display man’s quest for obtaining understanding of what cannot understand. Frankenstein’s lust for more knowledge, to the point of cutting himself off from the people he loved, shows how man’s desire for understanding can plague one’s mind and impair their better judgment. Frankenstein wanted to play God, tampering with the creation of life and inventing an abomination of mankind. Frankenstein observes what a surreal monster he has created when he sees the monster and exclaims “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs” (42). Shelley provides foul, beastly descriptions of the monster to convey something unnatural; something that must have been man made moving on its own capable of sentient action. Shelley provides an example of what would happen if man were to meet the unknown; what would happen if man could create life by himself and not by nature? What would happen if man could create life from death? Frankenstein goes against all laws of nature and defies societal norms embarking on his own quest for knowledge that no other man dares to venture on displaying highly emotional motivations based on Romanticism. Robert Walton too displays a desire of exploring what is unknown to man by befriending the monster to understand a different side of the unknown. The monster itself knows nothing of modern society making it an unknown concept to it as it has entered the world with no knowledge of the human world. The monster realizes when he says “All men hate the wretched; how then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.” (85) that no matter how much it tries desperately to learn that which he does not understand, human society will always refuse to return the favor because they do not wish to explore the unknown. The desire to explore the unknown is a defining aspect of Romanticism and the main characters of the story all contain different motivations that share the fact that they have a deep desire to seek out understanding and knowledge in common.
To put in contrast, where there is a defiance of nature in Frankenstein’s part there is also a love and appreciation of nature in the part of Frankenstein’s monster. The monster himself displays affectionate behavior to the environment around him and he shares an emotional bond with Walton. This is displayed when he states "Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the seam and every sight afforded these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth." (Pg. 23) There are many instances in which Mary Shelley focuses on the characteristics of nature or has a character passes some sort of fondness for nature. There are also cases of extreme emotion from each of the characters portrayed in the novel. Whether it is Frankenstein becoming horribly wrought with sorrow after the monster kills his wife or when the monster himself knows he can never be a part of society and lashes out. Walton also expresses deep emotion for the monster itself and is one of the only humans in this novel that treat him like a human being. "I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race." (23). Romanticism is mostly viewed as something relating to high emotion in the first place and Shelly utilizes her characters and her settings to provide situations where humans are at their emotional peak. Nature is often used to convey that emotion that characters have in the moment and utilizing the varying natural surroundings of the world of Frankenstein help Shelley’s character get in touch with their emotions displaying that to the reader. Emotional examples of Romanticism can be missed the first time someone read’s Shelly’s Frankenstein partly due to societal influences and cultural changes over time creating a perception that Frankenstein is a tale of horror and suspense. While the gothic themes of the novel make it hard to deny that is the case, those same themes such as the monster’s inability to fit in with human society or the contrast of what is nature and what is manmade share the qualifications of Romanticism. The fact that common society even still today think of the literary work as a tale of a mad scientist unleashing his horrible monster upon the world is a testament that we view the supernatural and the disfigured as something to fear, something to avoid, and something to never wish that it becomes a reality. Looking at it from a Romantic viewpoint, the tale becomes one of self-reflection and how human beings should respond when something challenges their societal norms.