Frankenstein Flashcards
3 critics speaking off the paradox between good and evil in man
“a division within man himself” - Amos Greig
Victor’s role as “paradigmatic” - Gilbert & Gubar
“boundaries between the human and monster in Frankenstein remain problematically blurred” - Williams
3 critics on role of women:
- in terms of nature
- as characters
- authorship
exclusion of female in creation =”a horrific imbalance in nature” - Haynes
“passive victims” - Jacobus
“perhaps no other literary work…by a woman, better repays examination in the light of the sex of its author” - Moers
2 critics on the effect of the frame narrative
- buffer
- individuality
“buffers Frankenstein’s horror story within Walton’s relative normality” - Lanser
“shows the limit of individuality by replacing the individual voice with a network of voices” - Favret
critics supporting the view that the creature resembles the rebelling proletariat/minority?
- denied
“like the proletariat, the monster is denied a name and an individuality… he belongs wholly to his creator” - Moretti
“unrepresentability” - Montag
critical opinions on ambition
+ quotes from the book to support
VF as “the Romantic over-reacher” - Mulvey-Roberts
“Victor craves a knowledge which is only fulfilling as a pursuit” - Stewart
“blinded by ambition” - Blumberg
RW: “success will crown my endeavours” “I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path” “one mans life” as “a small price to pay for the acquisition of such knowledge”
VF: “I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge” ablinded by ambition”
isolation, critic and quotes
“the creature’s desire for companionship is one of his most human qualities” - Punter
“Satan had his companions, fellow-devils … I am solitary and abhorred” “alone and miserable” [Cr]
“solitary cell” [VF]
“I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime.” [VF]
“My vices are the child of a forced solitude which I abhor”
“solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”
“the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene”
the gothic/horror, critics
- landscapes
- intertextuality
- future of man
“Gothic landscapes are desolate, alienating and full of menace” - Botting
intertextualities amalgamating to form “one last Gothic convulsion” - Karl
“the gothic resists optimism about the future of mankind” - Clery
nature/the sublime - critics
“Gothic landscapes are desolate, alienating and full of menace” - Botting
the sublime an “overwhelming experience that transcends everyday normality” with “some degree of horror” -Burke
“those characters that are capable of deeply feeling the beauties of nature are rewarded” - Mellor
nature/the sublime - quotes
“maternal nature bade me weep no more”
VF: “penetrating the secrets of nature” and “uncovering her hidden laws”
“a noble war in the sky”
“so beautiful yet terrific” “sublime and magnificent scenes”
“vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes”
mountains “filled me with a sublime ecstasy, that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy”
“I pursued nature to her hiding-places”
“these sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving”
“terrifically desolate” “Mont Blanc in awful majesty”
“the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene”
Cr: “these bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow-beings”
1 on effect of epistolary and frame narrative
“the epistolary style adds a sense of realism, the frame story device adds credibility” - Harris
contextually, what did Karl Marx say that was particularly apt about the proletariat/bourgeoisie?
Marx: “What the bourgeoisie produces, above all, is its own grave diggers”
quotes - the gothic/horror
“dreary night of November” “do you not feel your blood congeal with horror”
“the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay”
“no, I am not so selfish, yet;”
“in the gloom a figure”
“charnel houses” “solitary cell” “a thing so utterly destroyed”
“a thing such as not even Dante could conceive”
“tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged”
“do you not feel your blood congeal with horror”
lack of resolution - critics and quotes
critic”“I shuddered to think that future generations might curse me as their pest”
VF to sailors: “be men” “return as heroes who have fought and conquered” “I would not that a mutilated should one go down to posterity”
RW: “I had rather die than return shamefully - my purpose unfulfilled”
unreliability of narrative
“I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity”
so “corrected and augmented”
RW: “I will at least make notes”
science - context
Galvani and Aldini - use of electricity to electrocute and induce movement in lifeless frogs/criminal
Humphrey Davy - scientist as “master” “science has bestowed upon man powers which.. interrogate nature”
Vs. Darwin’s more observation-based approach
