Gothic Literature c. 1764

Gothic literature, a movement that focused on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason, grew in response to the historical, sociological, psychological, and political contexts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Stock conventions of the genre: 

• an intricate plot
• stock characters
• subterranean
• labyrinths
• ruined castles
• supernatural occurrences

     In its attention to the dark side of human nature and the chaos of irrationality, the Gothic provides

for contemporary readers some insight into the social and intellectual climate of the time in

which the literature was produced. A time of revolution and reason, madness and sanity, the 1750's

through the 1850's provided the stuff that both dreams and nightmares were made of.

Frankenstein

     Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in 1818. The novel does not fit neatly into any generic designation, but many critics suggest that it is the first modern work of science fiction. However,

Shelley’s emphasis on isolation, wild landscapes, supernatural occurrences, and the haunting

presence of the double places the novel within the context of the Gothic. 

     Ironically, it is through the pen of a woman that this novel transforms the Gothic from a feminine form of literature. That is, most earlier Gothic novels featured heroines fleeing for their lives and honor. In Shelley’s novel, there are virtually no female characters, and Victor is a cold and hard scientist. Indeed, Shelley brings together both the rationality of science and the irrationality

of the will to power. Victor is the model of a man seduced by the power of science, unable to see until it is much too late that there are some things, such as the creation of life, that belong to God alone.