Romanticism to the Victorians to Modernism
The end of the Restoration ushered in a new era of English literature. The idea of society as a whole was depicted more often in the literary works as one may see in Shelley’s Frankenstein, a story of a forlorn monster, or through Dickens’ Oliver Twist, a story of social influences on a small child’s life. These authors deviated from the early focus on individuals as till the Restoration era (e.g. Gulliver’s Travels – focus on Gulliver and his accounts) to a focus on the society (e.g. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist – focus on the social influences on a small child’s life). More noticeable, amongst the authors of this latter period, is the deviation from genius in romanticism towards permutation in modernism. The works that would best depict the transition are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – a tale of an experiment gone wild, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist – the story of an orphan facing the realities of the world at too tender an age, and Yeats’ poems that offer a glimpse of the modernist views held by the people of the era, such as the Bloomsbury Group. The English slowly accepted the intermingling of art and literature with commercialism, as is evident in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, which is set right in the h
As the daughter of noted writers and philosophers, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley’s headway into the literary world was certainly expectable. Shelley’s most notable work would be Frankenstein that was inspired by Lord Byron’s proposition on writing a ghost story. Shelley’s story, though initially just a few pages, modeled into the novel Frankenstein after encouragement and inspiration from her husband, another writer Percy Shelley. Shelley’s Frankenstein from the era of romanticism mixes the horror of the Monster with his intimate humane feelings. The Gothic novel deals intertwiningly with the people’s prejudice to outward appearances, and with the dangers of playing God with science. The prejudice against the Monster is the result of judging a book by its cover. Looking at his ghastly exterior, people fail to recognize the true qualities of the Monster, who though an ogre by appearance is originally kind at heart. Intelligent and sensitive, the Monster attempts to integrate himself into human social patterns, but all, who see him, shun him. His words “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on” makes the reader realize that the Monster too is a being with deep sensitive feelings within. The prejudice in the reader’s mind may well be rooted in naming Frankenstein’s creature “the Monster”. The idea behind the novel was a horrific science fiction, but the authoress has also given a sensitive touch to the horrors. The book also applies an effective tool of direct communication, through letters from Robert Walton to his sister, through narrations by Victor Frankenstein conveying a chilliness of the dangers faced from the Monster, and through the Monster’s complaints about the injustice imparted to him. (“Even now, my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice”). Such works as the Frankenstein, like many others of the period combined romanticism with the general background of the story. Frankenstein stood out in the era of romanticism, because it integrates the deepest human feelings, even with the much abhorred, much inhuman Monster that towards the end of he novel proves to be
Some topics in this essay:
Oliver Twist,
Shelley’s Frankenstein,
Yeats’ Byzantium,
Shelley Frankenstein,
Boy’s Progress”,
Monster Monster’s,
Moreover Dickens,
Modernism Yeats’,
Charles Dickens,
Rose Maylie,
oliver twist,
dickens’ oliver,
dickens’ oliver twist,
shelley’s frankenstein,
oliver’s home,
english society,
yeats’ poems,
charles dickens’ oliver,
era romanticism,
focus,
social influences,
child’s life,
influences child’s life,
oliver twist ,
social influences child’s,
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Approximate Word count = 1483
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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