quotes Flashcards

key quotes recall

1
Q

F - new species

A

‘A new species would bless me as its creator and source many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.’

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2
Q

F - sacrificial female

A

‘I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself’

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3
Q

F - Elizabeth description

A

‘docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect’
‘her figure was light and airy’
‘I loved to tend on her, as I should a favourite animal’
‘most fragile creature’

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4
Q

F - life and death

A

‘Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world’

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5
Q

F - monster entitles to female companion

A

‘You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being […] I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse.’

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6
Q

F - Walton’s isolation

A

‘I bitterly feel the want of a friend’

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7
Q

F - Monster, no Eve…

A

‘no Eve soothed my sorrows, or shared my thoughts; I was alone’

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8
Q

F - Monster, misery

A

‘I am malicious because I am miserable’
‘I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous’

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9
Q

F - role of creator and isolation

A

‘you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us’

‘I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.’

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10
Q

F - Victor and isolation

A

‘I shunned the face of man; all
sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, death-like solitude.’

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11
Q

F - Hell, guilt over Justine and to Walton

A

‘I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.’

‘like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.’

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12
Q

F - Monster and Adam

A

‘Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence’

‘I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.’

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13
Q

F - Monster and Satan

A

‘Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition’

‘Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested’

‘The fallen angel became a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone’

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14
Q

F - Monster and resemblance to creator

A

‘God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance’

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15
Q

F - Monster and identity

A

‘Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come?’
‘Monster that I am’
‘miserable deformity’
‘was I then a monster? a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?’

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16
Q

F - Victor and suicide

A

‘Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest?’

‘I was doomed to live’

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17
Q

F - Victor and blame

A

‘nor do I find it blameable’
‘I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature.’

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18
Q

F - Monster and suicide

A

‘I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames […] My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’

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19
Q

F - role reversal

A

‘Slave […] You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!’

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20
Q

F - Monster and power, fear

A

‘Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.’

‘if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear’

‘I shall be with you on your wedding night’

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21
Q

F - Walton of V

A

‘What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.’

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22
Q

F - dangers of ambition

A

‘I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge’

‘Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was.’
‘sorrow only increased with knowledge’

‘learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own’

‘Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition’

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23
Q

F - Monster and fire

A

‘found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain.’
- knowledge does cause sorrow, and fire does cause pain

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24
Q

F - Monster’s apearance

A

‘I collected bones from charnel houses’

‘yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath

‘lustrous black, and flowing’ hair
‘teeth of a pearly whiteness’

‘watery eyes’
‘shriveled complexion’
‘straight black lips’

‘figure hideously deformed and loathsome’ - Monster

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25
Q

F - Monster and nature

A

‘I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.’

‘The pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some degree of tranquillity’

‘I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon’

‘my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer’

‘The cold stars shone in mockery’

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26
Q

F - Victor and nature

A

‘Morning, dismal and wet’
‘Black and comfortless sky’
‘patterned dismally’

‘my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature’

‘Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as naught; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.’

‘Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?’

‘I was tempted to plunge in the silent lake’

‘The rain fell in torrents’ - after Elizabeth’s death to represent overpouring emotions

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27
Q

F - Monster, good and evil

A

‘Evil thenceforth became my good’

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28
Q

F - Victor’s superficiality

A

‘I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God!’

‘breathless horror and disgust filled my heart’

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29
Q

F - revenge

A

‘I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction’

‘Revenge kept me alive’

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30
Q

F - superstition

A

‘the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion’

‘The furies possessed me’

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31
Q

HMT - motherhood

A

‘No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn’t do badly by one another, we did as well as most.’

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32
Q

HMT - it

A

‘That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.’

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33
Q

F - early show of ambition compared to Elizabeth

A

‘The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own’
- An early hint at Victor’s dangerous ambition, and his naïve belief that man is powerful and wise enough to comprehend nature

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34
Q

F - obsession

A

‘I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit’

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35
Q

HMT - Handmaid’s Tale and Jewish prisoners

A

‘Four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse’

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36
Q

HMT - women’s bodies

A

‘worthy vessel’
‘breeding purposes’
‘I am a national resource’
‘we are containers, it’s only the inside of our bodies that are important’
‘two-legged wombs’

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37
Q

HMT - what motivates all the characters

A

‘give me children or else I die’

38
Q

HMT - uniform

A

‘everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us’

‘the white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen’

39
Q

HMT - names

A

‘I tell him my real name, therefore I am known’

‘this is how you get lost, in a sea of names’

40
Q

HMT - compose

A

‘my self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born’

41
Q

HMT - clean

A

‘I wish to be totally clean, germless, without bacteria, like the surface of the moon’

42
Q

HMT - complacency before

A

‘we were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces on the edges of print’

43
Q

HMT - complacency now

A

‘The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him.’

44
Q

HMT - Aunt Lydia and sight

A

‘To be seen is to be penetrated’

45
Q

HMT - opening, bodies, transgression

A

‘we still had our bodies’

46
Q

HMT - cloud

A

‘I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object’

47
Q

HMT - body and identity

A

‘I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely’

48
Q

HMT - waste

A

‘waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

49
Q

HMT - envy

A

‘in this house we all envy each other something’
‘I envy the Commander’s Wife her knitting’

50
Q

HMT - butter

A

‘as long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft, we can believe that we will some day get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire. We have ceremonies of our own, private ones’

51
Q

HMT - latin

A

‘nolite te bastardes corborundorum’

52
Q

HMT - news

A

‘I’m ravenous for news […] even if it’s false news, it must mean something’

53
Q

HMT - black market

A

‘there’s always a black market, there’s always something that can be exchanged’

54
Q

HMT - SJ and power

A

‘she wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so’

55
Q

HMT - suicide

A

‘they’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to’
‘it only opens partly’
‘the glass is shatterproof’

56
Q

HMT - doctor

A

‘He could fake the tests, report me for cancer, for infertility, have me shipped off to the Colonies with the Unwomen’

57
Q

HMT - forgiveness

A

‘forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.’

58
Q

HMT - power

A

‘I now had power over her […] I enjoyed it a lot’

59
Q

HMT - the script

A

‘May the Lord open’
‘Blessed be the fruit’
‘Under his Eye’

60
Q

HMT - the bible

A

‘The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it?’

‘GOD IS A NATIONAL RESOURCE’

‘He has something we don’t have, he has the word’

61
Q

HMT - God and suicide

A

‘Oh God. It’s no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?’

62
Q

HMT - talking to God

A

‘I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I’m talking to a wall. I wish You’d answer. I feel so alone.’

63
Q

HMT - storytelling

A

‘Where should I go?’
‘Here is what I believe’
‘I tell, therefore you are.’
‘I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.’
‘This is a reconstruction’
‘If it’s only a story, it becomes less frightening’
‘it’s a way of keeping her alive’ - Moira

64
Q

HMT - the Fall

A

‘the Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge’

65
Q

HMT - Janine

A

‘Janine, inflated but reduced, shorn of her former name’
‘she’d roll over for anyone’
‘Ofwarren, formerly that whiny bitch Janine’

66
Q

HMT - ignoring

A

‘Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it’

67
Q

HMT - ordinary

A

‘Ordinary […] is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary’

68
Q

HMT - freedom

A

‘There is more than one kind of freedom […] Freedom to and freedom from’

69
Q

HMT - love and sex

A

‘No one dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from’

‘what did we overlook?’ ‘love’

‘it was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself’

70
Q

HMT - night

A

‘The night is mine, my own time’

71
Q

HMT - flesh

A

‘All flesh is weak. All flesh is grass, I corrected her in my head. They can’t help it, she said, God made them that way but He did not make you that way. He made you different. It’s up to you to set the boundaries. Later you will be thanked.’

72
Q

HMT - hunger

A

‘he makes me hungry’
‘I hunger to commit the act of touch’
‘The smell of nail polish has made me hungry.’
‘Death makes me hungry’

73
Q

HMT - garden

A

‘She was snipping off the seed pods with a pair of shears’ ‘the swelling genitalia of the flowers’

‘Saint Serena, on her knees, doing penance. I often amused myself this way, with small mean-minded bitter jokes about her’

‘What I coveted was the shears’

‘Then we had the irises, […] so female in shape it was a surprise they’d not long since been rooted out.’

‘Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently’

‘a Tennyson garden’

74
Q

HMT - Commander and belittling

A

‘“Tonight I have a little surprise for you,” he says. He laughs; it’s more like a snigger. I notice that everything this evening is little. He wishes to diminish things, myself included.’

75
Q

HMT - isolation in the house

A

‘The Marthas are not supposed to fraternise with us’

‘Why tempt her to friendship?’

‘How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An exchange, of sorts.’

‘I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people.’

76
Q

HMT - comforting presence of nature

A

‘a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed’

‘I once had a garden’

‘Sometimes the Commander’s Wife has a chair brought out, and just sits in it, in her garden. From a distance it looks like peace.’

‘I felt as if a protective arm were being withdrawn’

77
Q

HMT - better

A

‘better never means better for everyone, it always means worse, for some’ - Commander, justifying Gilead

78
Q

HMT - marriage and sex before

A

‘there was nothing for them to do with women’
‘the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it’
‘men were turning off on sex’ ‘they were turning off on marriage’

79
Q

HMT - religion

A

‘blessed are the meek. She didn’t go on to say anything about inheriting the earth’

80
Q

F - doubling

A

‘my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave’
‘I, the true murderer’ - when visiting Justine

81
Q

HMT - doubling

A

‘he too is illegal, here, with me, he can’t give me away’
‘I glide with Ofglen along the sidewalk; the pair of us, and in front of us another pair, and across the street another’
‘Siamese twins’
‘She wants it all right, that baby. I see the two of us, a blue shape, a red shape, in the brief glass eye of the mirror’ - SJ takes her to have sex with Nick, universal need for a child

82
Q

F - fear of mate

A

‘race of devils’
‘she might becom ten thousand times more malignant than her mate’

83
Q

F - creature’s offer for mate

A

‘I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. […] We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human’

84
Q

HMT - Particicution

A

‘Our nostrils flare, sniffing death’ - animalistic language, mob violence
‘He has become an it’ - dehumanised
‘Death makes me hungry. […] I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse.’

85
Q

HMT - storytelling + nature

A

‘I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?’

86
Q

HMT - salvaging

A

‘for women only’
‘A collective murmur goes up from us. The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all.’
Three women are hanged, ‘two Handmaids, one Wife’
‘placed my hand on my heart to show my unity with the Salvagers and my consent, and my complicity in the death of this woman’
‘Flightless birds, wrecked angels’

87
Q

F - monster and lang

A

‘[language is] a godlike science and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it’

88
Q

HMT - misquoting Marx

A

‘From each, says the slogan, according to her ability; to each according to his needs’

89
Q

HMT - the word

A

‘He has something we don’t have, he has the word. How we squandered it, once.’

90
Q

HMT - restricting knowledge

A

‘they don’t want us to hear what the unwomen are saying’