gothic genre

extreme landscapes

‘what may not be expected in a country of eternal light?’ “We beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plans of ice.” ‘we are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict’

‘the remotest of the orkneys as the scene of my labours. it was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten by the waves’.

sinister and sublime settings

• ‘the dissecting room and slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials’

• ‘in a chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house… my workshop of filthy creation’

• ‘i collected bones from charnel houses’.

• ‘forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel houses’

• ‘one of the remotest of the orkneys as the scene of my labours’

• ‘it was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves’

horrifying events intended to terrify the reader

• ‘i saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open’ supernatural

• ‘i embraced her; but as i imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change and i thought that i held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and i saw the grave worms crawling in the folds of the flannel’

female victim

• ‘the tortures of the accused did not equal mine’

• ‘such a declaration would be considered the ravings of a madman’

• william and justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts’

• ‘ten thousand times more malignant than her mate’

• trembling with passion, destroyed the thing i was engaged with’

• ‘the murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck’

blurred boundaries

• ‘my cheek had grown pale with study and my person had become emaciated with confinement’

• ‘i did not before remark how very ill you appear - so thin and pale -’

• ‘for i was lifeless’

isolation

‘i shunned my fellow creatures as if i had been guilty of a crime’

‘I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions’ ‘i was now alone’

extreme psychological states / extremity

‘he saw a wildness in my eyes’

‘ill-befitting the wounds my mind had sustained’

‘i had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy’

‘i writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain i felt’

exploration of the forbidden / journey/pursuit

• ‘i saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain’

• ‘i pursued nature to her hiding places’

• ‘as i dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living creature to animate the lifeless clay?’

• ‘and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame’

forbidden knowledge/power

Victor to Walton: ‘In scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.

‘I beheld a stream of fire issue from and old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but the blasted stump’

‘both life and death appeared to me in ideal bounds, which i should first break through and pour a torrent of light into our dark world’

‘a new species would bless me as its creator and source’

‘no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as i should deserve theirs’.