Frankenstein and The Handmaids Tale - Setting and Location

Frankenstein - realistic setting

"I am by birth a Genevese"

his parents "resolved that (he) should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt"

on the journey - "I was now alone. In the university, whither I was going, I must form my own friends, and be my own protector."

The Handmaids Tale - Dystopian setting

"we yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability"

"The republic of Gilead, said aunt Lydia, knows now bounds. Gilead is within you. Doctors lived here once, lawyers, university professors. There are no lawyers anymore, and the university is closed."

Frankenstein - importance is placed on domestic location, allowing the characters to develop.

The Delacey residence grants the creature the ability to become accustomed to human existence - "they possessed a delightful house"

"through this crevice, a small room was visible, white-washed and clean, but very bare of furniture."

"I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another ... this was indeed a God-like science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it"

The Handmaids Tale - importance is placed on domestic location, allowing the characters to develop.

set mostly in the Commander's house. domestic setting is solidified by the Martha's

"Late Victorian, the house is, a family house, built for a large rich family."

"A blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out"

"Or I would help Rita to make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft resistant warmth which is so much like flesh."

Frankenstein - change in location allows the protagonist to pursue something, accelerating the plot of the novels

Victor pursues his creation to many different locations in order to prevent him from causing further harm. "We heard the rumbling thunder of the falling Avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself..."

"It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy"

"He had escaped me; and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean."

The Handmaids Tale - change in location allows the protagonist to pursue something, accelerating the plot of the novels

jezebel's - offred pursues rebellion - perhaps she feels obligated to due to the power of the commander?

"The women on the other hand are tropical, they are dressed in all kinds of bright festive gear"

"At first glance there's a cheerfulness to this scene. It's like a masquerade party."

The commander asks Offred her opinion on "our little club". "he's breaking the rules"