The Sublime, the Gothic Novel and Mary Shelley
In a nutshell
Gothic Novels take the aesthetic reactions of Romantic literature and corrupt it by creating delight and confusion from terror. This use of terror is directly linked to the Sublime, which expresses noble or elevated behavior or feelings. In this summary, you will discover Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a literary classic that gives rise to themes such as scientific danger, the sublime, terror, supernatural incidents, and persecution.
The Sublime
The term Sublime refers to an artistic, linguistic, and literary form that aims to express elevated feelings or behavior. The concept of the Sublime sees a modern development in 1757 with Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, where the beautiful and the sublime are opposite, because the Sublime is related to the effects upon the perceiver, so the person who enjoys sublimity becomes more important than the qualities of the pleasing object.
The Sublime becomes the sensibility that causes astonishment, the soul state in which all motions are suspended. In lower degrees, the Sublime produces admiration, reverence, and respect, in higher degrees, the Sublime produces terror. So, Burke's question is: 'what is terrifying us?' Subjectively, it is the fear of pain, but objectively, we are terrified by the vastness of the ocean, by darkness, by what is powerful, and by what is infinite. The mix between horror and pleasure, or the sort of 'horrible beauty', affected the literature of the 18th century where obscurity, terror, and introspection were the features of the Gothic Novel.
The Gothic Novel
The Sublime concept deeply influenced the Gothic novels which gained lots of popularity by the end of the 18th century. The adjective Gothic came from architecture long before it defined literature. Walpole was the first to create a link between these two in his work The Castle of Otranto, which had as subtitle A Gothic Story.
The aim of Gothic novels was to evoke fear in the reader and the realization of all the potentialities of the mind beyond reason. The nature of this fear was a direct reflection of the specific historical moment, characterized by a growing disillusionment of enlightenment of rationality and by the French and American revolutions.
The most common features of the Gothic novels are the following:
- The great importance of terror (characterized by obscurity and uncertainty) and horror (characterized by evil and atrocity).
| - Heroines dominated by passions and fear of imprisonment; ancient settings, such as isolated castles, abbeys, and convents.
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- The night is considered the most important setting, darkness creates an atmosphere of fear, oppression, and mystery.
| - Complex plots, often complicated by narratives. The popular use of supernatural beings, such as vampires, monsters, ghosts, or witches.
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The Author's Life
Mary Shelley was born in 1797 under the wing of a family of intellectuals that were influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. Just after her birth, her mother died, so her life was emotionally troubled. However, she was often surrounded by great intellectual stimuli, in fact, her house was usually visited by literary icons of her age such as William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, her future husband.
In 1816, after flying to France with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley started to write Frankenstein which was published anonymously in 1818. In 1822, Shelley and her husband moved to Lerici, where Percy sailed in a storm and was found drowned ten days later. Shelley returned to England in 1823, and she died there in 1851.
Frankenstein
Frankenstein is a Gothic novel published in 1818. There is a strong influence of science in the development of Frankenstein. In fact, the author was aware and passionate about the latest scientific theories and experiments that were taking place in her historical period. Innovations in the chemistry field, evolutionism, and electricity are present in the novel, whose protagonist represents the first incarnation of the theme of science and the responsibility of mankind: creating life without respecting the rules of nature will bring disastrous consequences.
THE PLOT
Doctor Victor Frankenstein is a Swiss scientist that succeeds in forging a human being by joining parts taken from corpses. As a result, the experiment is ugly and disgusting, and the monster becomes a murderer that in the end kills his own creator.
THE MONSTER'S FIGURE
The monster's figure can be associated with the theme of Rousseau's natural man, which lives in a primitive state and has no influence from civilization. Also, the myth of Prometheus is significant, Prometheus stole the fire from the Gods to give it to men, and he represents the image of the overreached, just like Dr. Frankenstein who creates the monster.
MAIN TOPICS
The main themes of the novel are related to the historical context and the author's influence. First, the novel portrays social prejudices since the monster is seen and considered an outcast. Second, is the fraud of the female role, because the creation of the human was possible without her. Third, the double, Walton and Frankenstein reflect the same ambitions of overcoming human limits.
THE CREATION OF THE MONSTER
The following text is an extract from Chapter 5, Frankenstein (1818).
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. | (Shelley M.) |
In Chapter 5, Victor Frankenstein completes his creation. However, he feels horrified by the awful appearance of the creature.
