Poor Things V. Frankenstein
...of the best Romantic authors on the basis of just one book. The notoriety that came with being the daughter of two famous authors helped, as did her age at the time of conceiving the book, but Frankenstein was the only one of her stories to achieve any fame. The level of fame it achieved, however, was astounding. In fact, even though it was originally published in 1818, Alasdair Gray still saw fit to use Frankenstein as his primary inspiration for Poor Things in 1992. The Gothic Romantic nature of both of these books is well known, but the monstrosity contained within them is an interesting topic to examine.
Romantic literature was known to contain notions of a return to nature, and exaltation of senses and emotions over logic and reason, and the Gothic Romance movement had these elements as well as a typically dark setting and supernatural overtones (Gothic romance 1). Shelley and Gray used all of these devices and more, including: word use; thoughts and feelings on loneliness and friendship; a unique, nonlinear structure style, Shelley's twinges of Milton's Paradise Lost and Darwin's theories, and Gray's illustrations, to create two closely connected stories.
The base monstrosity for Shelley was in the conception of the book. Beginning soon after her elopement with Percy Shelley, the loss of her newborn son, and the rejection of her father, she had a dream. The company she was keeping at time also helped the dream and the story.
Depressed from some of these tragic events, reeling, as one so young must be, from her new elopement, she encountered Polidori and Lord Byron while honeymooning with Percy in Switzerland. Their conversations on the state of society and medicine, particularly Darwin's theories, this was in 1816, gave her an immense knowledge, and many theories of things to come. It was the combination of all of these conflicting feelings and...
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