Romance Day 4 - Frankenstein

Reception

  • some people love it immediately

    • intrigued by the supernatural elements (monster)

  • some people feel uneasy about it

  • pushing ethical boundaries

  • new narrative structure

    • narrator slight-of-hand makes it seem like there are multiple perspectives

  • critics liked the imagination and storytelling

  • some didn’t like the skewed morals and dark themes

  • many questioned if it was actually shelley that wrote it because it seemed too good for a woman to have written

influence

  • set the stage for an entire genre

  • shaped gothic fiction forever

  • responsibilities of creators to their creations

  • cultural impact of frankenstein’s monster

  • feminist literature

  • environmental themes (how humans interact with nature)

birth of frankenstein

  • weather is influencing the moodiness of the book

  • the vampyre (john polidori) and frankenstein came from a scary story writing competition

    • lord byron’s darkness was also written then, influenced by their environment

  • “the year without summer” (1816) bleak, macabre, and doom-laden vibe

  • they were vacationing in Switzerland, which had a landscape that was bleak and moody

  • staying at the Villa Diodati and they are stuck inside due to intense rain

  • deep conversations about art, speculating about bringing people back to life with electricity

  • tension building - mary <3s percy, john polidori <3s mary, claire clairemont <3s lord byron, lord byron <3s himself

  • percy had a freak out while byron was reading a ghost story (this influenced a part of “the vampyre”)

  • mary shelley had a nightmare that fueled frankenstein → a doctor built a grotesque being which he somehow brought to life and it started to come to life

  • fantasmagoriana and christabel are both huge influences of the summer of 1816