While poetry has been the genre most closely associated with the Romantic period, the novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has attracted many more readers in recent years. Its canon has been widened to include less well known authors alongside Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth and Thomas Love Peacock.

The Gothic novel also became very popular. One of the most famous books of that time was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

“Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not he so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived."

Although the Gothic novel was part of Romanticism, it does have specific characteristics:

Characteristics of the Gothic novel

• May include an innocent heroine persecuted by a lustful villain
• Appearance of ghosts
• Characters who disappear mysteriously
• Supernatural occurrences
• Focus on death and the events surrounding death; the living may seem half-dead and the dead half-alive.
• Characters act from negative emotions: fear, revenge, despair, hatred, anger.

Assignment 2

• Click on the hyperlink to read the summary of Frankenstein 
• Read excerpts of Frankenstein (scroll down) and make the exercise.
• Which characteristics of the Gothic Novel can you identify in the excerpts you've just read?

 Further information (for those who can't get enough):

Watch this great BBC documentary on Frankenstein

Below you find excerpts of Frankenstein. Link the following themes to the excerpts below.

Write answers on a separate sheet and include this in your assignment

Relationship and loss - Power of Danger and Learning - Nature - Playing God

  A. "... she was bathed in tears, and, throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union... then himself solicited the young woman's father to consent to her marriage with her lover." (p.11)

 B. "He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife." (p. 19)

 C. "As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbands of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. The catastrophe of this tree excited my extreme astonishment" (p.23)

 D. "But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They ascent into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. " (p.27-28)

 E. "After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter." (p.30)

 F. "The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage: but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature." (p. 32-33)

 G. "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light onto our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father would claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs." (p.32)                                                                                                       

H. "I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered by both the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future ...the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity" (p.111)

I. "The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sunk at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water, and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay." (p.134)

 J. "...but when you speak of new ties, and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was; or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds, which hardly any later friend can obtain. " (p.147)