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.
