Frankenstein Quotes

"it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manner, or morality" - John Wilson Croker, Quarterly Review 1818

Changing perspectives (published end of Romanticism start of Victorianism). Takes issues with the verisimilitude of the story.

"I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I ave no relation or friend on earth." - Creature

Dialogue, alliteration, marxist reading, the "Other", isolation

"I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent sting to you, as mine has been" - Frankenstein

Dialogue, epistolary form, ambition, allusion, sibilance, parallel characters

"regretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her experience, and cultivating her understanding" - Frankenstein

Narration, educated discourse, feminist reading

"the pretty Mrs Mansfield", "my ugly sister", "the rich banker", "your favourite school fellow" - Elizabeth

Narration, epistolary form (in letter), lexical choice/ adjectives, feminist reading (separation of the spheres)

"Because he knows a frightful fiend/ Doth close behind him tread" - Frankenstein

Narration, intertextuality ("The Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge), foreshadowing, parallel characters

"[my health] gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed" - Frankenstein

Narration, lexical choice, eco-critical reading, Romanticism

"He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance" - Walton

Narration, narrative structure (last line), epistolary form (doesn't sign off letter), the Gothic, eco-critical reading

"the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources" - Frankenstein

Narration, simile, personification, the Sublime, marxist reading, Romanticism

"the prevailing fault of the novel", "dismiss the novel without further comment" - Anonymous, The British Critique 1818

Patriarchal values, feminist reading.

"written in plain and forcible English" - Sir Walter Scott, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 1818

The idea that language, and hence the meanings it can create, changes over time. The value of literature.