Gothic Aesthetics And Transformation:a Case Study Of Frankenstein

Gothic novels are known for their particular genre of darkness, which is reflected through characterization, physical settings and the arrangements of movement. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein(1818) has followed the tradition of classic gothic novels and at the same time has shifted from a traditional gothic novel into a “speculative fiction”.That transformation of Frankenstein is mainly reflected in three perspectives: an aesthetic feature of “grotesque”; a new literal form of “science fiction”; and the romantic thought of questioning the radical ideas.Like all the gothic novels, the theme of Frankenstein is expressed through dark narratives, which aesthetically contributes to distinguish gothic novels from others. Fred Botting has proposed that the typical feature of gothic novel is a specific kind of negative aesthetics which aims to reach a certain positive purpose by writings about relatively opposite objects. Considering this, the negative aesthetics of Frankenstein is interpreted into three major themes: the delight of fear, the tragedy, and the grotesque.The idea of sublime is mostly remarkable for the negative aesthetics, and Edmund Burke’s(1729-1797) idea of “pain and pleasure” has well explained the readers’ preference in reading something of gothic genre. The fear caused by reading a gothic novel is divided into terror and horror: terror is something that is suddenly scares the reader(for instance as the frightful appearance of the monster, or the unexpected movements within darkness); while horror is more emphasized on the long-term effect.The description of Frankenstein’s research(his dealing with dead bodies) and the miserable situations of the characters murdered by the monster, they all contribute to create the effect of terror. But what is really horrible about Frankenstein is the thought that the technologies and radical ideas mentioned in the text could be a real issue among society. Fear alone is not the most prominent aesthetic feature of Frankenstein; what really makes this novel aesthetically famous is the terrible figure of the monster, which provides the sharp contrast to the goodness that is destroyed in the text. The ugly imageof the monster is well resonating with Victor Hugo’s(1802-1885) idea of grotesque that ugliness exists with beauty and its existence is necessary for the appreciation of beauty.The last perspective of negative aesthetics is the preference for reading tragedies, which Fred Botting did not discuss in his Gothic. Aristotle(384-322 B. C.) proposes the idea that “watching a tragedy would cause the purification of audience”, and the tragic fates of characters in Frankenstein echo with those famous tragedies in the history of literature.One of the most remarkable features of Frankenstein is its being named as the“precursor of science fiction” for the scientific elements that appear in the text. Many of the writers from the Romantic period such as Mary’s father William Godwin(1756-1836) and husband Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822) were fanatical amateurs of science. Their particular interest on electricity had influenced the composition of Mary’s and was expressed in Frankenstein through various details. Another important issue that influenced Mary Shelley’s idea regarding the creation of an artificial man comes from the theories of an ancient alchemist, mysteriously and vaguely mentioned in the text by the enthusiastic words of the protagonist. When the immeasurable power of “modern science” of the 19 th century blends with the absurd ideas of ancient chemists, it is Victor Frankenstein who plays the role of a mad-scientist, and the monster he creates is the disastrous embodiment of that madness.The transgression of playing God not only brought suffering to the protagonist, but also involved his relatives in a catastrophe. Henry Clerval, a friend of Frankenstein’s since childhood, is a character that was “being formed in the very poetry of nature”(Shelley, 1996: p107). The author intensively connects him with the description of beautiful and comfortable natural sceneries, while his death- led by Frankenstein’s creation suggests the devastation of the poetic goodness of Nature under the unpredictable power of Science. Similarly, also the female characters in this novel are endangered by the disaster led by Frankenstein. Three characters respectively embody different identities of women—mother, wife, and daughter. The author focuses on describing the fairness of these female characters, so their deaths make the savagepower of the science more prominently seen. The sufferings of Frankenstein’s relatives also suggest that it is not science alone that causes the disaster. Since Godwin and Shelley were both famous for their radical politic philosophies, the subtitle of the novel“the Modern Prometheus” could be considered as Mary Shelley’s display of her anxieties against the radical ideologies.Under the influences from different ways, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a particular complex work even among gothic novels. It shows Mary’s anxieties, her confusions in mixing images of sciences and philosophies, or rather the satire to P. B.Shelley’s radical ideas.