Renowned author Nathaniel Hawthorne demeans the notions of perfection and humans “acting with the Hand of God” in his short story “The Birth-mark”. He achieves this by creating a story where a scientist, Aylmer, attempts to remove a hand-sh

One of the gothic era’s most famous novels is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This novel is a perfect example of an ambitious literary figure, Victor Frankenstein, who attempts to attain immortality through the creation of a being out of non-living things. However, Shelley portrays her disapproval of Victor’s actions by using the remainder of the novel to unfold Victor’s downfall. From the moment Victor creates the monster, he realizes he has made a fateful error, “…I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created” (Shelley 35). By the end of the novel, the monster himself reveals he has punished Victor, “I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst” (Shelley 163). In her introduction to the novel, Shelley discusses the question of infusing life into a dead body through "galvanism". She first heard and pondered this scientific goal of the Enlightenment at a night conversations at the Diodati. The idea of infusing life into matter had been in existence for thirteen years. “It was through the writing of Frankenstein itself that she arrived at this position though, predictably, she was considerably chastened by Frankenstein's own attempt at usurping the powers of both woman and creator” (Mishra). In addition, Shelley experienced many hardships during her lifetime including many miscarriages, deaths of children, and the death of her beloved husband. Not only do many similar deaths take place in Frankenstein but several of the characters are named after people in her life. For example, the death of Victor’s younger brother William parallels with the death of Shelley’s own son William. Potentially due to the fact that Shelley was pregnant for the majority of the writing of the novel, Frankenstein contains extremely emotional characters such as the monster and has a dramatic and moving plot. One would think Mary Shelley would support the idea of galvanism in order to bring back her deceased husband, but instead she was fervently against it.

A literary work often compared with Frankenstein is Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson’s novel also suggests his discern with humans’ tries at altering mortality by describing the dete

Some topics in this essay:
Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Character” Personal, Wilde Dorian, Literary Databases, Brook Farm, Stevenson Wilde, Hand God”, College Oxford, Louis Stevenson, dr jekyll, dorian gray, robert louis, nathaniel hawthorne, gale literary databases, true self, gale literary, wilde dorian, infusing life, mary shelley, dr jekyll hyde, robert louis stevenson, louis stevenson,