Duality In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein

The Gothic Novel is considered as an appearance of the late 18th and early 19th century, culminating in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, first published in 1818. Ideas of that time period surfaced in fictional prose and thus influenced the Gothic Revival at the end of the century, including works such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887) as well as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The conception of duality in fictional prose has been a repetitive motif throughout literary history. This double may manifest in form of evil doppelgängers and hence, it reveals the shadow selves of the human kind. Along with the establishment of psychology as science, the literary double represents a completely new way of thinking. Consequently, evil is not presented as something external anymore, but rather perceived as something existing within every human. From the beginning of the 19th century to its end, the doppelgänger motif changed from being an outer manifestation of good and evil (e.g. Frankenstein and its creature) to an expression of duality within only one person (e.g. Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Furthermore, the social dimensions will be presented in order to understand the concept of duality and its importance for liberating inner discrepancies. With the purpose of illustrating moral understanding in Victorian England, the case of Oscar Wilde will be dealt