Frankenstein context

What did Mary Wollstonecraft write?

A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

What did Mary Wollstonecraft argue?

Since men and women are born with the same ability to reason, women should enjoy just as much education, power and influence in society as men do

Quote about beauty from VRW

‘..strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty…’

Mary Wollstonecraft quote about mothers

‘Besides, how should a woman void of reflection be capable of educating her children?’

Women considered physically weaker but morally superior to men which meant they were best suited to the domestic sphere. They counterbalanced the moral taint of the public sphere which their husbands laboured all day and were preparing the next generation to carry on this way of life

Victorian era ideas of ‘separate spheres’

Celebration of Satan, rebellious hero who defies the power of God. Not the embodiment of evil, but a victim of the tyrannical power of the establishment

Romantic views on Paradise Lost

A titan who received punishment from the gods for seeking enlightenment and power. Fire / light are pivotal to the story and represents knowledge.

Prometheus

Prometheus as a rebellious hero and figurehead for their literary movement. Seen as a revolutionist.

Romantic views on Prometheus

Nature seen as God’s creations and any attempts to master or control nature is a moral and spiritual failing. Nature is seen as more powerful, awe-inspiring and terrifying than man can comprehend.

Nature in Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Reanimation of a dead corpse using a galvanic battery. Mary Shelley mentions galvanism as an influence on her story in her 1831 preface to the novel. In 1803, Galvani’s nephew was able to experiment this with some success on a criminal who had been hanged, making his eyes open, right hand raise and legs move

Galvanism

Individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism, physical and emotional passion and interest in the mystic and supernatural. Nature, human feelings, compassion for mankind, freedom of individual and Romantic Hero and rebellion against society

Romantic Ideals

First view viewed nature as peaceful, calm, nurturing and a source of spiritual renewal. Second viewed it as frightening and awe-inspiring. Also viewed God and nature as one and the same. Nature was a metaphor for the sublime.

Romantic views on nature

Romantics held that humans were by nature good but were corrupted by society. “Natural man” was one who was close to nature and unspoiled by social institutions. Society’s negative influence on men is to transform amour de soi (positive self love) into amour-propre (self love or pride). Former represents instinct for self preservation and latter represents articficiality and comparing self to others resulting in pleasure in pain or weakness of others.

Rousseau’s view

Age of Reason - philosophical movement primarily in Europe were it was thought that its participants were illuminating human intellect and culture. Rise of concepts such as reason, liberty, and the scientific method. Enlightenment philosophy was skeptical of religion especially the powerful Catholic Church, monarchies and hereditary aristocracy. Influential in ushering French and American revolutions

The Enlightenment

Rejection of the theory that humans are born possessing innate knowledge and that we are born with none at all (blank slates- tabula rasa). He said we can only know that things exist if we experience them. Mary Shelley was reading this while writing Frankenstein

John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

VF’s obsession with his research represents the new scientific spirit that would have become professionalised during the nineteenth century. The decades leading up to the publication of Frankenstein were among the most fruitful in the history of science and technology.

Nineteenth century attitudes towards science and technology.

That a magnetic needle would move when subjected to an electric field first convincingly demonstrating the long suspected relationship between electricity and magnetism

Gian Domenico Romagnosi’s discovery in 1802

Demonstrated lightning was a form of electricity

1751 Kite experiment Gian Romagnosi

Noticed leg of a dissected animal could be made to move through the application of a charge

Luigi Galvani

Express the dark unconscious depths of the psyche that are repressed and truths that are too terrible to be comprehended by the conscious mind. Frankenstein was inspired in part by a dream, expressed in Mary Shelley’s introduction to the novel.

Dreams in Gothic Literature

Terror relies more on suggestion, anticipation and indeterminacy, leading to feelings of the sublime. Horror is direct, explicit, excessive with overt images of death, violence and decay.

Ann Radcliffe in ‘on the Supernatural in poetry’ (1826) explaining difference between terror and horror.

Attitudes towards death changed in the late eighteenth century and instead of being an accepted part of life become dramatised, exalted and feared. Society became obsessed with a ‘beautiful death’

Late 18th/early 19th century ideas about death

Why was Frankenstein written

A ghost-story telling competition

Intertextual references

Paradise Lost and Sorrows of Werter

Sorrows of Young Werter

A young man’s extreme response to unrequited love; ends in suicide

Technique common to gothic fiction

Pathetic Fallacy

Ruskin’s definition for the falseness that occurs to one’s perceptions when influenced by violent or heightened emotion

emotional falseness

Terror

Relies on suggestion, anticipation and indeterminacy leading to feelings of the sublime

Horror

Direct, explicit, excessive with overt images of death, violence and decay

What medium are terrible truths / repressed depths of the psyche often revealed to characters through in gothic literature

Dreams

Why are depths of the psyche revealed in dreams

When a person sleeps, reason sleeps, and the supernatural unreasonable world can break through

What painting inspired Elizabeth’s death scene and who painted it?

Henry Fuselli ‘The Nightmare’