Frankly Romantic and Gothic

Frankly Romantic and Gothic

Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, is a brilliant story that has stood the test of time, and is still very relevant today, just about two centuries after it was originally written. Shelley gets her message across in a rather unique way, starting and ending the novel with letters of an outsider to the story and devoting multiple consecutive chapters to a monologue from a monster. The book also contains many themes. It delves into the contrast of hero to anti-hero, Byronic hero, creator to creation, and even switches from a Romantic style to a Gothic tone, and then arguably back to Romantic again.

The novel begins with a recognizably Romantic tone. Victor Frankenstein’s life is an exceptional one, and his future is extremely bright. He has parents that love each other, and him, very much. His mother’s history leads her to adopt a child named Elizabeth from a poor family, and she only brightens Victor’s world. He is wealthy, has a family that loves him, and has a driving motivation in his life, which is to pursue knowledge in the field of natural philosophy.

Everything about the beginning of the novel is optimistic, all the way down to the setting. Victor Frankenstein describes his environment saying, “in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home --- the sublime shapes of the mountains; the changes of the seasons; tempest and calm; the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers --- she found ample scope for admiration and delight” (24). This is a very idealistic description of the setting which sets the Romantic tone early on in the novel.

Victor Frankenstein’s upbringing was also described in a very Romantic manner. Victor himself states, “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindess and indulgence. We felt that they were… the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed” (25). Victor loved his parents and his childhood, and remembered it fondly even after disaster stuck. His early life set him up to be very optimistic of his future, and this quote makes it abundantly clear how Romantic the beginning of the novel was.

The Romanic beginning of Frankenstein is enough to make the reader envy Victor Frankenstein’s life and share in his happiness, however Shelley implements a drastic shift in tone from Romantic to despairingly Gothic. Gothic fiction is characterized by the elements of fear, horror, the supernatural and darkness, as well as by characters such as monsters, demons, heroes, heroines and villains, and the novel covers all of these elements. Victor Frankenstein had everything he could’ve wanted, but when his dad encouraged him to get an education abroad everything began to unravel from poor Frankenstein. In Ingolstadt for college, Victor slaves over his work to such an extent that he loses his health, and when he finally creates life in an inanimate form, the rest of his life is spent in fear and misery.

One way in which the gothic nature of the middle part of the novel is illustrated is through Victor’s constant depression and fear. After the monster that he created murders his innocent little brother, and in turn leads to the hanging of Justine, the whole Frankenstein household is plunged deeper into mourning, but Victor, who feels