Week 1: Frankenstein

Post a response (approx. 250 - 350 wds.) on your blog page discuss some of the "gothic" aspects of Frankenstein or whatever text you read for this week.

The first gothic aspect I noticed was having a dark and creepy environment, which is largely described in chapter 5 of Frankenstein. The scene depicts Victor bringing his monster to life and the eerie surroundings are listed: “It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” This allows the reader to imagine the dark and frightening atmosphere of the event which adds to the horror aspect.

Following this, the creature is first introduced and illustrated in detail, showcasing another gothic aspect of having a “hideous” monster or supernatural being introduced to the audience. Victor describes the monster as, “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.” The monster of course is hideous as he is mostly seen as the evil force in the novel.

Another gothic aspect from the Gothic Formula found in Frankenstein is having a character who is "sympathetically familiar" and the setting is removed by circumstances from the normal to another darker realm and having the terror begin from there. However, I think within the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist and antagonist are debatable. As Victor Frankenstein is the one to create the monster and abandon it in fear, he was the one that created the evil environment and the negative outlook the creature has after facing rejection from society because of his appearance and the abandonment he feels from Victor. This is an aspect of the character that the audience can sympathize with, for being judged by their appearance or by their first impressions on people instead of their true self. Because Victor first abandoned the monster to fend for himself, I feel that this was the monster’s entry into the “darker realm” of the human society where people, and in this case, monsters, are judged solely by their appearances. For example, in chapter 16, the monster rescues a girl from drowning, but because of his appearance, a man shoots him thinking that he was attacking the girl. This leads to the monster's killing of William (Victor's younger brother) in a rage against Victor. This also showcases the gothic aspect of murder and gore as the monster describes the strangling the child, which is only one of the handful of murders the monster commits later on in the novel.