The Gothic Novel

1. The Gothic Novel A short introduction to the genre

2. Origins • Gothic novel reaction against Augustan ideals (many feature fights between fathers and sons) • Some elements found in earlier ballads (the supernatural, witches, ghosts, ghouls, drowned sailors knocking on girls’ windows) • Violence of Renaissance drama which was then coming back in vogue • The rise of Methodism, wilder than Anglicanism • Influence of Rousseau: nature and primitives

3. Gothic versus Mainstream • Mainstream is realism, Gothic is emotional, extravagant, irrational • Gothic plays on awe, ectasy, disorder and is often deliberately anti-intellectual or nonintellectual • Gothic refers to a form that is frowned upon in architecture….

4. Mary Shelley • Father Godwin celebrated writer, champion of justice for all, proposes that Man is perfectable • Mother Mary Woolstonecraft, feminist avant la lettre, dies 11 days after Mary is born • Mary feels guilt about Mother’s death • Meets married Shelley when she is 16, affair, more guilt, miscariageof daughter, even more guilt • Percy Shelley advocates free love, pair elopes with sister-in-law Claire Clairmont in tow • Mary is very intelligent and interested in science

5. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein • Snowy summer of 1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, age 19, and her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva • Reading Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleysand his personal physician John William Polidorito each compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote the scariest tale.

6. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein • Mary’s idea after nightmare during which she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." This was the germ of Frankenstein. • Byron wrote a short bit on the vampire legends heard while travelling Balkans, from this Polidoricreated The Vampyre(1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre.

7. Influences • Recent experiments and philosophies • Mary’s mind much on still-born child • Guilt about suicide of Shelley’s wife • The feeling of being cast out by society (all three were..) • Mary’s father had written a gothic novel about a man who was hounded (Caleb Williams) • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (the obsessed narrator)

8. What’s new about Frankenstein? • Not a supernatural ghost but a real, ‘created’ monster • Much of story takes place in society, not in dungeons or castles • No barely hidden sexuality in the story • Legend of Prometheus (violation of the contract between God / the gods and Man)

9. Very short plot • Captain Walton discovers a Dr Frankenstein in the Arctic • Through letters he recounts the doctor’s life • Monster created in chapter 5! • Monster created with ‘materials’ and imbued with ‘the spark of life’, no mention here of thunder and electricity • Frankenstein abhors his creation, it escapes

10. Very short plot • Frankenstein’s brother is killed, Justine accused and hanged but Frankenstein knows whodunnit • Monster tries to befriend villagers but fails as they get frightened • Frankenstein meets monster again in the Alps, agrees to make him a mate, but reneges • Monster vows revenge, on F.’s wedding night: it kills F.’s friend Clerval, and after the wedding Elisabeth, F’s wife, too.

11. Very short plot • Frankenstein wants revenge • He follows the monster everywhere, finally to the Arctic region • After telling Walton his story, he asks him to kill the monster if he dies before he can do it himself. • F. dies. • Just after his death, the monster arrives finds his creator is dead and decides to build a funeral pile for himself, leaves the ship and disappears on his ice-raft in the darkness.