1st Baron Hastings

Shelley’s gothic monster of the imagination is compared to the ‘devil’(1) of Hyde displaying man’s mental inhibitions. Stevenson adapted Frankenstein into a creation of science that inhabits the oppressive aspects of humanity. The fear is haunting because the elements of animality are presented as lingering within everyone thus intensifying the horror. The idea that the monster evolved from the beast within, portrays a more tangible monster. “Jekyll grew pale to the lips… a blackness about his…

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there are recurring themes of isolation, nature, and scientific advancements. Written during the Industrial Revolution, Frankenstein also takes inspiration from the machinery and technology that was developed during that time. Shelley, as well as other romanticists, was against the societal shift towards technology and encouraged the appreciation of nature. Shelley uses the monster in her novel as a societal reflection of the Industrial Revolution and as a warning…

Hard Times is a novel written by Charles Dickens which judge the English society and tells us about the social and economic pressures of the 19th century. Hard Times is a Victorian novel and is very realistic. Victorian novels bring about realism in literature. Dickens novels are realistic depiction of Victorian society like class consciousness, rapid urbanization, poverty, child labor etc. Dickens talk about love, aspiration, human passion and Hard Times is a novel written by Charles Dickens…

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge, is a poem that was written in 1798 during the Industrial Revolution. The tale guides the reader through the adventures of an ancient mariner. The mariner begins telling his tale during a wedding. The mariner learns his lesson after killing an innocent Albatross on a voyage. Coleridge uses symbolism and diction to instill the lesson of respect for nature and all of God's creation. The lesson imparted by Coleridge in the poem is done so…

Known as the ‘Russian Byron’, Mikhail Lermontov is revered for his radical interpretation of the Romantic antihero in A Hero of Our Time. He sought to fashion “a portrait built up from the vices of our whole generation” (Lermontov, preface), to create a character who would embody the spirit of the contemporary Russian man. In what would be his only prose work, Lermontov employs traits commonly associated with the Byronic hero as the basis for the character of his protagonist, Pechorin, such as…

In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, cruelty is the emphasized theme in majority of the development of the plot. Victor Frankenstein, conducts a deceitful expedition to inherit satisfaction into creating a life, but over a course of time, Victor and his monstrous creation became dumbfounded by their own egocentric aspiration and aggrieved condemnation, in which it concluded into an appalling adversity for both Victor and his monstrous creation. Mary Shelley demonstrated to the audience that it is…

In the times that Frankenstein is written, exploration and application of science is exploding along with developments in all aspects in Industrial Revolution. One dramatic event in scientific community at that time is the famous “vitalist debate” engaged by two medical professionals John Abernethy advocating vitalism and William Lawrence propagating materialism. Critics constantly assume what standpoint in the debate is Shelley taking by analyzing her main character “the Creature” in…

Changes in society, beginning in the 18th century to the mid 19th century and continuing into our own time, underlie the romantic movement.Romantics abondoned many dominant attitudes and prinicples of previous age.Romanticism was a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality, physicl materialism and Classicism of 18th century.Romanticism focused on personal emotions, the individual, the subjective, irrational, the imaginative.Their deep love,…

A common reading of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is that it is a cautionary story about the dangers of going too far with science and meddling with what one does not understand. The novel does deal with themes of negligence and lack of care, but not necessarily in the arena of science itself. Rather, the novel uses the story of Victor, a figure who is at once a mother and a father, to display themes of parental negligence and the negative outcomes that this produces in the child. However, this…

The cultural period known as “Romanticism” arose at the end of the eighteenth and was characterized by radical changes in intellectual, artistic, and social patterns. It is generally understood as concluding in the early nineteenth century. It reflected revolutions in America and France, but also England in the form of the Industrial revolution. These dramatic changes in the world were mirrored, in turn, by significant developments in poetry, prose, and fiction. Although it may be said that…