One thing that I noticed while reading Frankenstein is the overall portrayal of solitude. Solitude is such an important concept to the Romantics. It is somewhat of an idealized state of being for a Romantic poet, a way of avoiding the distractions of urban life so that one can compose in tranquility. Solitude for the Romantics also brought them closer to nature, an effect that the transcendentalists would eventually seek.
While Frankenstein does approach certain aspects of the sublime, his solitude is not portrayed in this idealistic light. Shelley stresses the unnatural aspects of being alone, how an existence detached from society can eat away at one's soul.
Finally, there is the failed nature of the experiment. Frankenstein's creature functions on one level as an allegory for the project Romantic poets undertake in solitude. By having the creature overwhelm Frankenstein, Shelly is arguing that "success" for Romantic poets may result in a creation that is too much for the writer to handle (on top of costing the writer his physical and mental well-being).
I think this is a great connection between Shelley and other Romantic era poets- in any 'era' of writing there are contradictions and conflicts in regard to 'how things are supposed to be'. I like that this one has become a topic of discussion for a lot of the class. For me I think that the important distinction between Shelley's portrayal of isolation and the poets is the intention behind it. For Shelley the isolation is dangerous in two ways: education and emotion. If isolation takes place during years in which one is supposed to be learning, it becomes detrimental to the individual because they do not know how to BE anything but alone. If the isolation is something that one (later in life) chooses to sink in to, then the danger becomes one of emotional detachment- that they would lose any and all attachments to their outside world.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that the Romantic poets stressed though, is that despite this isolation IN NATURE, they were still emotionally attached to their world and strove to become a part of it rather than separate from it. While they may have hoped for isolation from the masses in order to compose poetry and idealize nature, they still retained emotional attachment to others in their circles as well as to nature itself...