Frankenstein felt that nature mocked him at times. Though he loved its beauty and stood in awe of its power, he felt it betrayed him when he was miserable. After traveling to Geneva, Frankenstein walks the land while contemplating his brother’s horrific death during the day. While looking up at the beautiful mountains, Frankenstein cries out: “’Dear mountains! My own beautiful lake! How do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?’” (Norton Anthology, 945). Shelley’s use of nature in this instance shows that nature continues unchangingly, while the lives of people change from event to event, emotion to emotion. As night falls, however, and the storm begins, Shelley shows the tempests that occur in our own lives. At night, the storms mirror Frankenstein’s mood, but during the day, he feels its beauty mocks him.
Another common theme of the Romantic authors focused on the neglected and the outcasts from society. Shelley most definitely accomplishes this with the two main characters: Frankenstein and his monster. The creature was an outcast for obvious reasons. He looked like a monster – even his own creator was horrified of him. Frankenstein describes him: “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch,” (Norton Anthology, 935). His appearance caused him to be cast off from society completely. Even when he acted for the good of others, he was only repaid with anger, hatred, and violence.
Frankenstein made himself an outcast: first from shying away from society while he worked feverishly day and night and secondly from the results of his creation’s vengeance. Holed away in his laboratory, he thought: “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed,” (Norton Anthology, 934). As he creates the monster, he creates solitude for himself. His friends begin to worry about him because he stays shut up in his lab. As the novel progresses and the creature begins to destroy his family and friends, Frankenstein finds himself even more outcast. He realizes that he has brought this pain and suffering upon himself; he also realizes that he is better off cut off from society because he feels this is where he belongs. Frankenstein knows that he deserves what is happening to him because of his desire to create life.
The third Romantic theme seen in Frankenstein is that of the supernatural. Clearly, this novel contains this element as it would be impossible for someone to create life from dead human “spare parts.” Shelley ideally entertained ideas of restoring death through Frankenstein: “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds…if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption” (Norton Anthology, 933). The giving of life is a supernatural feat, something accomplished by a supernatural being. Shelley attempts to give Frankenstein supernatural genius in how to create life. In the end, however, Frankenstein determines he was cursed with knowledge. He was embittered slightly towards his father because his father knew the philosophers and scientists that Frankenstein was reading about. His father never took the time, however, to explain why their theories were discarded. Frankenstein should have cast off the ideas of attempting the supernatural before his career even began.
One last but most prominent Romantic theme in Frankenstein is the relation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s life with her characters’ lives. Her biography can be closely compared in many different ways to most all of her characters. The first character that she strongly identifies with is Victor Frankenstein himself. Most of Shelley’s children died at a very young age. After her first child died eleven days after it was born, she recorded in her journal: “Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold and that we rubbed it before the fire and it lived,” (Ty, Online). Her journal entry clearly shows her fascination with bringing the dead to life. Shelley wished she could do what Victor did and bring to life from something that was dead – at least as far as her child was concerned. Many scholars believe that this was the entire inspiration for Frankenstein. Shelley’s famous mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died giving birth to Mary Shelley. Because her daughter died and because she was the cause of her mother’s death, Shelley was fascinated with life from death.
Shelley can be compared to the creature and his deformity. Shelley had four children, one of which survived to adulthood; she miscarried a fifth child. Any mother would clearly feel like a failure if their children were so unhealthy that they died. Many have argued that she herself felt deformed and hideous like the creature. Her mother’s death clearly played a role in her identification with the creature. She herself caused death, just as the creature killed people in his search for vengeance.
Shelley left her loving father in 1814 and fled to France with her future husband Percy Shelley. Already currently married, he lived with Mary for years. During this time, Mary’s father rejected her and was very bitter with her for what she did. She spent the rest of her life attempting to resolve her once wonderful relationship with her father. In her story, the creature spent his entire existence attempting to get his creator, his “father,” to love him and accept him. This feeling of the creature can easily be seen in Mary’s attempt to make peace with her father.
Because she was living with a man that was not her husband, Mary was ostracized from society as well. Percy was all she had in life, but he was interested in other women and had several affairs.
“Condemned by her beloved father, who believed that she ‘had been guilty of a crime,’ the seventeen-year old Mary, not yet a wife, and no longer a mother, was insecure and increasingly dependent on Percy for emotional support and familial commitment. He, on the other hand…was eager to live out his theory of ‘free love,” (Ty, Online)
With Percy enjoying the pursuits of other women, Mary felt even more alone and neglected in life.
Percy’s pursuits of other women identify Mary with yet another character: Elizabeth Lavenza. Elizabeth displays the traditional place of women in that society. She waited for Victor for years, simply hoping that he would just come home to her. So unsure of his affection for him, she wrote him asking him if he loved someone else. Victor held her in high regard and wanted to marry her more than anything; but he never truly loved her as she deserved. He thought, “While I admired her understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favourite animal,” (Norton Anthology, 923). Elizabeth was the ever loving, ever patient, ever faithful epitome of the perfect woman. Shelley must have felt some connection with Elizabeth because she was constantly waiting for her husband to look to her and to tend to her needs, especially after their children died. Shelley probably wondered if Percy “loved another” as Elizabeth asked Victor. This thought must have constantly plagued Shelley.
Connecting with her characters, idealizing the supernatural, concentrating on the outcasts, and displaying powerful beauty in nature; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley proves that her novel Frankenstein deserves a spot on the shelf with all of the other Romantic authors. Though it includes horrific deaths and eerie creatures, her novel is clearly presented with classic Romantic themes. Anyone to argue that this novel would not belong with other Romantic works would have to ignore the main themes that run throughout every other Romantic piece. Shelley puts a unique horror story approach on the traditionalized view of the Romantic authors.
Bibliography
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Norton Anthology: Seventh Edition, Volume 2. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000. 907-1034.
Ty, Eleanor. “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 116: British Romantic Novelists, 1789-1832. Literature Resource Center. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Davis Library, Chapel Hill, NC. 3 February, 2005
