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The Gothic Mood In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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With all the extraordinary characters and controversial details in Mary Shelley’s original 1818 edition of Frankenstein, sometimes Robert Walton and his letters are overlooked. Despite being one of the most easily ignored characters in the story, a little explication of his letters can uncover extreme and bizarre behavior. Interestingly enough, his behavior is befitting of the entire story’s gothic mood (or at least befitting of Mary Shelley’s parodic tone, an exaggeration of the gothic mood employed by her male counterparts in the Romantic movement). By using some oddly coded language as well as some more overt interactions, Mary Shelley paints Robert Walton as a man of extreme psychological complexes comparable to Victor Frankenstein himself …show more content…

Much of the way she characterizes Victor and other men makes fun of the overinflated egocentrism of male poets and other artists in her life and the Romantic era. At the same time, several facets of the story seem to reflect the loneliness, loss, and guilt Mary Shelley felt in her own life. For Shelley, these emotions may have been brought on by the loss of her mother or the way in which Percy seemed more infatuated with Byron and their other housemates than he was interested in her among other tragic reasons including the suicide of her half-sister or the deaths of several of her own young children. Thus, readers might easily conclude that Walton exemplifies a caricature of the melodramatic Romantic poet who is full of himself but could have a history of tragedy in his life. Everything about the way he pens his letters and the words that Shelley uses points to this. In his essay, University of Augsburg professor Rudolf Beck argues, “Walton's case ... seems to bear out Mary Shelley's criticism in Frankenstein, not only of the ironically irrational and hubristic aspects of modern (male) science, but perhaps also of the utopian dreams of the Romantic age” (28); he writes this in reference to the skewed way in which Walton perceives his journey to the Arctic, but this analysis can also apply to other facets of Walton’s characterization. There is more to Walton than is initially

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He was alone but was intent on conquering his fears and being brave. He grows tired of his company, but only wants to talk to someone that is like himself. She furthers goes on to say “Masculine humanity only recognizes its own image on the bias of gender, class and race (Pon, 36)”. A person must be European, wealthy and a male for Walton to consider talking to him. The placement of these paragraphs was logical and gave examples to support how Frankenstein displays

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Knowledge can be Blessings and Curse A teenage girl Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in the 18th century. A Gothic novel Frankenstein deals with two genres, Gothicism and science fiction. Victor, one of Mary Shelly’s characters represents man’s pursuit of knowledge which ultimately leads towards the path of destruction while another character Robert Walton implemented his knowledge wisely to get benefits for the society. Mary is indicating to the society that mankind has to pay full attention to science and scientific innovations in order to avoid the catastrophic events due to misuse of knowledge.

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Emotional and physical isolation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are the most pertinent and prevailing themes throughout the novel. These themes are so important because everything the monster, Victor, and Robert Walton do or feel directly relates to their poignant seclusion. The effects of this terrible burden have progressively damaging results upon the three.

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Kyle Lyon Professor Ed Steck AWR 201 F3 14 April 2015 Annotated Bibliography Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Hunter, Paul J. Norton Critical Edition.

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The novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley depicts certain ideas that can not be described or written within novels. For example, the telling of the story between three different narrators can teach the reader about putting together “pieces of a puzzle” in order to understand the plot of the story. The three narrators in Frankenstein are Victor, Walton, and the Creature, all with very distinct personalities and character traits. Of these storytellers, Victor could possibly be debated as the most extraordinary. The qualities that make Victor pictured as this unique character, that the fact that he is a dynamic character, and that he is an unreliable narrator.

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Frankenstein wants the glorification and pride in being the first person to create life. Frankenstein sees himself in Walton, and Walton says, “ ...do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose?...,but I prefer glory to every excitement that wealth place on my path”(10). Walton is a younger extension of Frankenstein and gives perspective to the ideas of the younger version of Frankenstein as he creates the creature. However, Frankenstein’s ambitions cost him dearly. The deaths of those around him make him suffer, but also the creation of the creature makes the creature suffer.

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Passion and Destruction As W. Somerset Maugham once said, “Passion doesn’t count the cost... Passion is destructive.” In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein leaves Geneva, his home town in the pursuit of knowledge, ding so he created a creature. Frankenstein gets frightened after the created the creature, so he leaves the creature in fear, only when he returns the creature is no longer there.

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In Mary Shelley’s Romantic novel, Frankenstein, an over-ambitious young scientist, infatuated with the creation of life without a female and the source of generation, breaks the limits of science and nature by conjuring life into a lifeless form constructed from stolen body parts. The young experimenter confesses his monstrous tale that defies nature to a captain who shares his desire for glory and the pursuit of knowledge. Though a Romantic novel itself, Frankenstein serves as a critique of part of the philosophy behind Romanticism, that is, the promotion of radical self-involvement that celebrates the individual’s pursuit of glory and knowledge. Both the lone captain and the young scientist seek glory from their quest for knowledge but ultimately their pursuits end disastrously. Throughout the novel, Shelley warns against excessive self-confidence, the ambitious overreaching in the acquirement of scientific knowledge, and the arrogant pursuit of glory, using the young scientist as a forewarning to the lone captain against his

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There are so many guides and commentaries for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that it might appear to some that the field is saturated. Audrey A. Fisch’s book, however, is a welcome addition, formed as it is by the specific objectives of the Icons of Modern Culture series (edited by David Ellis). Fisch expresses these objectives very clearly in her Introduction: her aim is to “unpack the story of the Creature in the popular culture tradition, unearthing a range of complicated Creatures, not all of whom are huge and mute, and many of whom, though different from Mary Shelley’s Creature, are intriguing in their own right” (7).

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Exigence: Bill Hughes’ “‘A devout but nearly silent listener’: dialogue, sociability, and Promethean individualism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)” is part of an academic conversation analyzing many late Romantic period poets and authors, such as Mary and Percy Shelley. Essentially, Hughes’ article is a continuation of Marilyn Butler’s work, which argues that “the second wave of Romantic poets, such as Byron, Keats, and Percy Shelley, pursued a neoclassical critical rationalism that retained the spirit of Enlightenment radicalism” (Hughes 1). To put it in Hughes’ own words, “[my] article argues that Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, continues that dialogism” (Hughes 2). Furthermore, Hughes analyzes the work of several other prominent

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Walton 's letters begin and end Shelley 's work by introducing the character of Frankenstein and also detailing the last moments of his life. While written in first-person like most of the book, his portion takes the form of letters to his sister, which lends itself to a slightly more personal style. In contrast with Frankenstein 's dramatic retelling of his life, Shelley writes Walton in a much lighter tone. Where Frankenstein 's narrative has a dark and dismal feel, Walton 's letters come across exactly as they ought to--as a man setting out on an adventure. These letters offer Shelley a platform from which to introduce the character of Victor Frankenstein.

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The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

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The genuine science within the novel lends credibility to the possibility of the Creature becoming a reality, a stylistic choice that greatly enhances the impact of the horror and gothic elements interwoven throughout Frankenstein. The representations of female characters convey a deeper contextual meaning to the reader, reflecting the personal issues and struggles of Shelley as a creative woman in the midst of a cultural revolution in 19th century England. Shelley’s father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the

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ENG-3U0 November 20 2015 Frankenstein: The Pursuit of Knowledge Throughout the course of their individual journeys, Victor Frankenstein’s extreme passion for gaining knowledge about creating life, Robert Walton’s curiosity to discover land beyond the North Pole and the monster’s eagerness to obtain knowledge about humans was the principal cause of each of their suffering. As such, In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the pursuit of knowledge is a dangerous path which leads to suffering. Victor Frankenstein develops a keen interest in discovering knowledge about living beings which ultimately results in his personal suffering as well as others suffering. To begin with, Victor embarks on an assignment through combining body parts and following various

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Critical Analysis About the author Naomi Hetherington is a member of the University of Sheffield, the department of lifelong learning. She is an early researcher in sexuality, religious culture, the 19th-century literature, and gender. She holds a BA in Theology and religious studies, an MA and a Ph.D. in Victorian Literature. She currently teaches four-year pathway literature degree at Sheffield University for students who have already attained foundation degrees. Among the books, she has written the critique of Frankenstein.

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