British Romanticism, Gothic
Literature, and Frankenstein
DC English IV
*Quiz postponed to
tomorrow! Finish
Frankenstein if you
haven’t already!
*Get ready to take notes!!
British Romanticism
English 1302
What is Romanticism?
► Romanticism
was arguably the largest artistic
movement of the late 1700s. Its influence was felt
across continents and through every artistic
discipline into the mid-nineteenth century, and many
of its values and beliefs can still be seen in
contemporary poetry.
 British Romanticism officially began in 1798 with the
publication of Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and
Wordsworth.
 Preface of Lyrical Ballads: “I have said that poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its
origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
Romanticism and Human Nature

Romantics focused on the teachings of Rousseau—man is basically good, but
corrupted by society.
 “I felt before I thought; tis is the common lot of humanity. ... I had conceived
nothing, but felt everything. These confused emotions which I felt one after the
other, certainly did not warp the reasoning powers which I did not yet possess;
but they shaped them in me of a peculiar stamp, and gave me odd and romantic
notions of life” (Rousseau)
 Many Romantics sought to correct social ills (reform
church and state) in order to allow the human soul to
return to its natural state of goodness.
► Darker
Romantics like Mary Shelley wondered if it was possible
for man to return to his naturally benevolent state.
► Lockean
philosophy—blank slate theory.
The Quest for Truth
The subjective nature of knowledge:
► Knowledge as personal, emotional,
individual experience
► Each man is an individual, unlike any other;
truth is subjective
► True knowledge is emotional
► The self is a subject worthy of study and
representation
Qualities/Characteristics
► Romantic
writers cultivated/appreciated
Individualism
reverence for the natural world,
idealism,
physical and emotional passion, sentimentality
an interest in the mystic and supernatural.
Absolute originality, reliance on imagination,
freedom of thought and expression
 More focus on women, children, the lower classes
(the common man)
 Emotion over reason, feeling over thought
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► Gothic
Romantic Gothicism
genre falls under the umbrella of
Romanticism
► Does not mean “horror,” but it can evoke
feelings of horror.
► Gothicism: a type of imitation medievalism;
it came to designate the macabre,
mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and,
again, the terrifying, especially the
pleasurably terrifying (Norton Anthology of
English Literature)
Gothic Literature and Women
► Despite
a number of male achievements in Gothic
literature (Horace Warpole writes the first), the
genre has held a special attraction for women.
► In the early days of the genre, reading Gothic
fiction became a favorite pastime of the middleclass female
► Women, oppressed by needlepoint, whalebone
stays, psychological frustrations, shame, and
babies, found reading/writing these stories as a
way to outline their pain.
► Gothic feminism seeks to escape the female body
though a dream of turning weakness into strength
Shelley as a Gothic novelist
pain abounds in Frankenstein
► While writing the novel, Shelley was dealing with a
number of biological matters
► Ellen Moers claims that the novel deals with “the
motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the
drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth
and its consequences. . . Frankenstein seems to
be distinctly a woman’s mythmaking on the
subject of birth.”
► Female
According to Leonard Wolf. . .
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The novel is a living artifact of the age-old risk of love.
Mary Shelley, eighteen years old and scared, gave
expression to an insight that is as simple as it is
heartbreakingly true: women have literally everything to
fear from men.
The flattery of women as primordial life-givers, as
instinctive nurturers is overshadowed by the fact that
death sits on her side of the bed. This is not rhetoric. One
is talking about real death. . It is a commonplace, an ageold fact that men and women both know, but which only
women have to confront; and it is this fact, deeply
experienced by Shelley, that gives Frankenstein a special
eeriness.
Mary Shelley, the non-feminist
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Women are “quite different
creatures [from men]—better
though weaker.”
Influenced by guilt of her
mother’s untimely death
Death of 3 of her 4 children
She suffered quite severely in
pregnancy; her husband was
rarely supportive and often
involved in other affairs during
her pregnancies
women are completely excluded
from the creation process in
Frankenstein; men sure do
make a mess of things!
Female heroines in the Gothic
tradition
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Typical Gothic female is
blameless, virginal,
innocent, good (absolute)
Triumphs over various
passive-aggressive
strategies (Gothic villain,
typically male)
Depicts woman as
innocent victims of a
corrupt and evil patriarchy
Argues that demure, docile
behavior is hardly a
protection (or virtue)
From the critics. . .
► Diane
Long Hoeveler: “Gothic feminism was
born when women realized that they had a
formidable external enemy—the lusty, evil
patriarch, in addition to their own worst
internal enemy—their consciousness of their
own sexual difference, perceived as
weakness.”
 From “Mary Shelley and Gothic Feminism: The
Case of ‘The Mortal Immortal’
Mary Shelley as the Gothic hero
► Carries
a heavy intellectual burden as the result of
her parentage, and even her marriage
► Her real (and imagined) victimization, first as a
result of being Percy’s wife, then later his widow
► Some critics suggest that while Percy haunts her
works, the true hero-villains of her stories were
her parents
► Mary Shelley felt destined to fulfill her mother’s
aborted philosophical and literary visions
As such. . .
► Frankenstein
stands paradoxically as the
Gothic embodiment of the critique of Gothic
feminism
► Shelley puts her fictional women into that
world and reveals that the sensitive male
hero is a mad egotist intent on usurping
feminine values and destroying all forms of
life in his despotic quest for phallic mystery
►Taken
from Hoeveler
Hoeveler: Frankenstein punishes
every female body in that text. . . .
► It
replaces the
maternal womb with
chemical artifice, only
to blast masculine
attempts at
procreation as futile
and destructive.
Gothic feminism and Mary Shelley
► Realization
that women would always be life’s
victims, not simply because of external forces, but
because their own bodies cursed them to forever
serve the wheel of corruption.
► Bringing to life a child who would die, or perhaps
soon die, condemned women to serve a merciless
god—the cycle of generation, birth, and death– in
a way that men did not.
► Could Victor be her own person striving to
overcome his/her own weaknesses?
► Hoeveler: “railing against the female body. . . .is
the only [gender] position Mary Shelley can take”
Consider. . .
► Wolf
contends that Shelley’s novel is a not a
“properly Gothic novel,” though it does inspire
fear.
► Primarily
because a young woman of genteel breeding is usually
at the center of the work
► What
about Shelley’s work does fit the “bill” of
Gothic fiction?
► Where does this novel address the condition of
women? Would you classify Shelley as a feminist?
► Where does it call for social change (in any
arena)?
Consider. . .
► Let’s
look at the other elements of
Gothicism.
► What elements do we see in Frankenstein?
► What elements of Romanticism do we see?
► Revisit the circular plotline
Connect to “The Birthmark”
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"The Birthmark" is such a rich story that when we begin to explore its deeper
meanings we find ironies, ambiguities, paradoxes, and rich symbols, all of
which invite a reader's individual interpretation. What irony, ambiguity,
symbol, and paradox do you find most interesting in "The Birthmark"?
In much of his fiction, Hawthorne treats pride as an "evil." Is there an evil type
of pride evident in "The Birthmark"?
In what ways is "The Birthmark" for all its promise of an "impressive moral"
actually morally ambiguous? Why might some readers find it difficult to view
Alymer, for instance, as purely and unambiguously "evil"?
Hawthorne didn't feel himself confined to an aesthetic that privileges
"verisimilitude," like many 20th century authors (notable exceptions being
Kafka, Borges, and Marquez). He felt comfortable allowing his fiction to include
"the spirit and mechanism of the fairyland" (his words). What "fantastic" or
"magical" elements appear in "The Birthmark"?
Consider Hawthorne's presentation of Georgiana in "The Birthmark." What
attitudes about women seem to inform his portrait of her?
Given that certain themes tend to recur in Hawthorne's fiction, among them
the limits of self-reliance and the evils of manipulation, can you analyze how
these themes are expressed in "The Birthmark"?