A Bridge Between Rationalism And Irrationalism

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) is a famous novelist of the Romantic period. Her masterpiece, Frankenstein, is considered one of the best Gothic novels as well as the first science fiction in the modern sense. My thesis is engaged in the study of this work from two perspectives: Frankenstein as Gothic fiction and as science fiction.IntroductionThis part traces the origin of the novel and presents literary reviews accessible for me.Chapter One Mary Shelley and FrankensteinChapter One consists of the author's hybrid heritages, her main works as well as a brief introduction of Frankenstein and its structure. Mary Shelley was the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the great Romantic poet. Both of her parents, William Godwin (1756-1836) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), were political radicals of distinguished literary fame of the second half of the 18th century. All of them exercised great influence on the development of Mary's thought and writing. Besides Frankenstein, she also wrote some other novels, stories, essays and biographies.The novel Frankenstein (1818, revised in 1831) tells the story of Frankenstein, a Swiss student, who spent many years in fabricating a man out of parts of dead bodies. This creature eventually turned on him and caused his destruction. The novel is a frame tale, that is, a story within a story within a story. The confessional narration employed in the first three circles renders great authenticity to the emotions demonstrated in the work. Besides, the characters from different frames are not irrelevant, and in the last scene, they appear together. The whole structure works like the Microsoft Windows System, tantalizing the reader to explore into the depth of the characters.Chapter Two Frankenstein as Gothic FictionThis chapter deals with the work as an outstanding Gothic novel.Gothicism, also called Dark Romanticism, appeared as the revival of the irrationalism and a reaction to the Enlightenment Movement, Industrial Revolution, and Neo-Classicism. Gothic novels are usually horror stories full of unexplainable death, murders, incestuous love, usurpation, ghosts, and supernatural phenomena, taking place in desolate medieval castles or ruins. The last decade of the 18th century and the first two of the 19th century witnessed a great increase in stories of this genre, when famous Gothic writers such as Anne Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and William Beckford published their masterpieces.The aesthetic values of the Gothic fiction are the sublime and the grotesque, orthe "strangeness of beauty". Gothicism works best in exploring into the depth of psychology, probes the dark aspects of human nature, and provokes awe and horror in the reader. Gothicism, due to its above-mentioned functions, found its way into works of many latter writers such as the Brontes, Dickens, Conrad, Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Henry James, Faulkner, Toni Morrison, to name just a few.Frankenstein inherits the main tradition of Gothic fiction. The settings are awe-inspiring. There are hair-raising scenes of the grave, and Frankenstein's somber lab where he made his "filthy creation". The author also makes some innovations: the story is set in modern time and mostly in cities, instead of medieval age and gloomy castles. There is no traditional character such as the sexually persecuted maiden or chaste hero who saves the heroine at the last moment. The hero is not the erotic villain or the somber aristocrat with hidden crime, but a student thirsty for science who later becomes highly unnerved and has a guilty conscience because of his creature.The novel takes Paradise Lost as an intertext, through the parody of which Mary Shelley subverts the fixed role allocation in Milton's epic. In her novel, bothFrankenstein and his creature undergo change of roles. Frankenstein is Adam, but assumes the part of God in creating a man. Yet his thoughtless creation turns him into Satan the fallen archangel and he suffers in the inferno of despair. To Captain Walton, the...