The Role Of Gothicism In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

From birth and to death, humans crave approval from their parents, seeking that motherly affection each of them should be entitled to. Nothing can replace the unadulterated love a mother has for her child, or the special bond many girls have with their father. Yet not all are so fortunate to indulge in such tenderness, as one of the most influential female authors of the 1900 century, Mary Shelley, had no such privilege, her mother dying while giving birth to her. The complete abandonment Shelley experienced through her parents and parental figures left her scarred for life, a powerful and continuous theme in all the novels she wrote. The parents of Mary Shelley were extremely famous and successful within their own regard, each highly respected …show more content…
The most identifiable one would be Gothicism, which was originally an art movement that took inspiration from many of the architecture, interweaving themes of ambiguity and intense horror within the writings. One of the easiest mistakes people make when reading the novel, Frankenstein, is calling the monster Frankenstein rather than the scientist, whose last name is Frankenstein. This is intended though, as the name itself derives fear and a grotesque feeling, something reader associate with the monster immediately due to its physical appearance, yet an underlying theme is revealed, in which in this case, the true monster is not only this unknown creature, who is “sublime in his ugliness, his simplicity, his passions, his wrongs and his strength, physical and mental, embodies in the wild narrative more than one distinct and important moral theory…” (2390) but the scientist as well. Such themes of horror would easily allow for romanticism characteristics, such as themes of the irrational and imaginative, which can be seen in the relationship Frankenstein has with his cousin, an illicit relationship that defies normal standards of relationships, which marrying your cousin was becoming socially unacceptable. Another example, again, the the creation of the creature itself, which was created from dead body parts that Frankenstein himself had dug up from a cemetery, experimenting with the unthinkable: raising the dead. It defies nature itself, and goes against all reasoning and logic, a clear rejection of the enlightenment movement, as what was intended by Mary, especially after her falling out with her father, siding with such a movement to lash out at