Frankly Romantic and Gothic

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responsibility for both deaths, is even more stricken with grief than the rest. After Justine is hanged Victor thinks to himself, “Now all that was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe” (76). This illustrates the horror and sadness Victor feels as a result of his creation, and is a clear contrast of darkness from the Romantic beginning.

Another gothic element of the middle part of Frankenstein is the supernatural and hero versus villain aspect of the novel, and the sadness that seems to follow both of these characteristics. It is quite obvious that the gothic section of the novel is full of supernatural characteristic, reanimating a dead body being the main instance of this, but the hero versus villain aspect of the novel is much more ambiguous. From Victor Frankenstein’s point of view the monster is the clear villain who has ruined his whole life, but he may also consider himself a bad person as he created this plague on his family. Victor says, “Cursed be the hands that formed you!” (87), which implies that he himself may also be a wretched character in his mind. While, from the monster’s point of view Victor is the villain. Victor created him and then left him to fend for himself in an awful world, in which everyone hates him for his appearance. On page 121, the monster says, “ Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge.” This quote shows the hatred that the monster has for Victor, clearly illustrating that from the monsters point of view Victor is the villain of this story.

Finally, at the end of the novel the tone arguably switches back to Romantic. In the very last chapter, “Walton, In Continuation”, the letter Walton writes is rather Romantic, save the monster’s final monologue. Walton writes, “ There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me” (197). Even as Walton and his crew are stranded among mountains of ice, he is optimistic and hopeful. His positivity and belief that his human will can beat these terrible conditions show an evolution of the novel back towards a Romantic tone. Walton even describes that Victor Frankenstein, a man who has been totally beaten down by life, “endeavors to fill me with hope.” These two instances show that the novel has come full circle, from Romantic to gothic and back to Romantic again.

In conclusion, Shelley uses language, setting, actions, and imagery to shift the tone of the story from Romantic to Gothic, and finally back to Romantic. The moments in the book with a picturesque setting, optimistic characters, and light language make up the Romantic sections. While, those parts of the story with dark, dreary, and cold setting, with depressed characters, and spiteful language construct the Gothic parts of the story. It is the mixture of these tones that makes Frankenstein such an excellent novel, and maybe why the story is almost universally know today, nearly two hundred years after Shelley wrote