Gothic

Gothic

Difference with realism:
1. Epistolary form is needed to add some element of realism: without something to bind it to real life, there is nothing to make the story seem plausible
  1. David Lodge: "a fictional letter is indistinguishable to a real letter"
What is it for
Key aspects
1. Setting of oppressive ruin, "barren", wild landscape in a European Country
  1. definately does this, set in Switzerland and England, however travelling to the ends of the earth by the end
    1. nothing could be more barren than the North Pole, no where farther away from civilisation or bereft of life
2. Heroine with "trembling sensitivity"
  1. Shelley breaks gothic convention before gothic genre has come to light, reflecting gothic genre of breaking conventions
    1. Victor as gay, not able to write about that at the time, taboo
    2. monster, outcast of society, is not only much more romantic/sexually aware and emotionally than Victor, but also more human
      1. reflection on something LOOK AT MORE
    3. CONTEXT by writing, Shelley is breaking conventions of the time etc, woman writing encouraged by her husband but always second place to him
      1. gothic was a way to tackle issues with her own life, delving into her own 'dark psyche', issues with her mother dying, leaving her family for a man wh
        o didnt love her, didnt care for her - trying to justify herself next to him
        also, being exposed to a lot of scientific discoveries from her father made her very interested in it all, but unable to express herself as a woman
      2. gothic gave her a chance to delve into the depths of everything, from questions of morality from French Revolution, to her questions about the world
3. tyrannical old man
  1. Victor is ALSO the tyrranical man
    1. doppelganger, personality doubling, being both hero(ine) and antagonist
    2. monster is tyrranical, lurking around edges, never sure when it will appear
      1. gothic terror in lead up to moment ie marriage night with elizabeth, Alps, Orkneys etc
      2. contemplates the rape of Justine
4. doppelganger
  1. Victor and the Monster
  2. Victor and Walton
  3. Victor and Justine
  4. D'Lacys and Frankensteins
  5. Elizabeth and female creature
    1. neither has marriage consummated
5. connotations of incest
  1. Elizabeth and Frankenstein were originally first cousins, but was changed to make them unrelated
  2. Victor's dream about his mother
6. poisonous effects of guilt
  1. Victor's actions haunt him, causing his complete ostracizaton from humanity, in the end
    1. persecuted by creature to lose everything he loves
      1. HOWEVER feels guilt for the wrong reasons, he feels he caused the death of those dearest to him, and released a monster into the world
        guilt SHOULD be felt for leaving creature, his first feeling one of abandonement, alone in the world, with no one to love him
        nature vs nurture, was the monster predominantly evil, or did he grow to be that way through the actions of Victor?
        JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
        "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains"
        Rousseau said that man was born with two instincts: self preservation and compassion. Basically, man is born good, and it is civiliation that corrupts
        "If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst and desire, we might nearly be free" Chp 10
        Shelley used three of his fundamental beliefs: that man is most content in the state of nature, society is what corrupts him, and once corrupted
        he can never return to his natural state
        "Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst and heat!" Chp 13
        "Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on a rock" Chp 13
        Rousseau believed that it was man's enslavement to his own needs that was responsible for most societal downfalls, from exploitation to depression
7. unspeakable thoughts, an inability to express the horror of his actions, no language to express such horror, not even gothic
  1. cannot speak to anyone about his actions, estranged from society
  2. also Romantic convention, believing no one could possibly understand the depth of their feelings, too close to godliness in their sublime thoughts
8. language of excess
9. "One of the principal horrors lurking throughout Gothic Fiction is the sense that there is no exit from the darkly illuminating labyrinth of language"
  1. Fred Botting, Gothic

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