British Romanticism, Gothic Literature, and Frankenstein

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

Romantic Gothicism • Gothic 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 middle-class 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 • Female 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.”

According to Leonard Wolf. . . • 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 age-old 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.

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! Mary Shelley, the non-feminist

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) Female heroines in the Gothic tradition

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

It replaces the maternal womb with chemical artifice, only to blast masculine attempts at procreation as futile and destructive. Hoeveler: Frankenstein punishes every female body in that text. . . .

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” "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"?

British Romanticism, Gothic Literature, and Frankenstein