1.

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD: 1770-1830

Main romantic poets: Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats and Shelley.
The term romantic began to be used in English in the early nineteenth century to
describe a group of writers from around the turn of the century who seemed to have
some characteristics in common. The used of the word romantic or Romanticism
refers, then, to writings produced in the period from 1780 to 1830.
Definition of romantic writing:
Romantic writing has been defined:
a) In historical terms, as a response to the political revolutions, especially the
French Revolution, of the last decade of the eighteenth century.
b) In aesthetic terms, as a reaction to Classicism in the eighteenth century, that
is, to rules of writing drawn from the example of ancient Greek and Latin
texts.
c) As lyric poetry. There is a kind of academic consensus about what British
Romanticism is. First of all, it is defined as poetry, mostly lyric poetry, that
is, poems in which our interest is with the first-person male speaker and his
private thoughts and feelings. But romantic writings include many narrative
works, both in verse and prose. The fictional prose defined as romantic
includes Gothic novels (Mary Shelleys Frankenstein), and historical
romances (Sir Walter Scotts).

Historical context:
The six canonical romantic poets, whose work is taken to best define romantic poetry,
can be divided into two generations:
1. The first generation includes Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
2. The second generation includes Shelley, Keats and Byron.
The main difference between the two generations was historical. Europe in the
1790s, the decade when the first three poets began to publish, was very different
from Europe after 1815, the Europe of the younger generation. Romantic
literature of the first generation was wartime literature. Britain was at war
1

against Napoleon from 1793 until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. There were
revolutions across Europe in the 1790s the most influential was the French
Revolution. The historical situation changed in the decade during which Shelley,
Keats and Byron began to publish. The war against Napoleon ended in 1815, but
new problems surfaced in Britain:
-

The war and a series of bad harvests meant that the poor in country
and city were hungry, and angry.

The industrial revolution then at its height meant that machines

were replacing the workforce in the textile industry, which led to riots
where the hungry unemployed broke the new machines they were
called the Luddite riots, which will appear repeatedly in the
literature of the first half of the century.

There was political discontent, based on the fact that very few had the
vote the franchise (right to vote) was very limited. The example
of the French Revolution raised hope in Britain for socio-political
changes, such as the reform of the franchise.

To conclude, the second generation of romantic poets lived the economic

and political discontent of the postwar years in a reactionary Europe.
What was the romantic poets reaction to this unstable socio-political
situation?
All of the romantic poets were linked to radical movements in their
youth (for example, they supported the reform of the franchise; they
participated in debates about the Revolution in the years that followed),
although Wordsworth and Coleridge turned conservative later in their
lives. The second generation all died young, two of them in exile
Shelley and Byron so they didnt have time to turn conservative.
Such historical events are the background we need to know to
understand Romanticism better.

WORDSWORTHS Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 3

September 1803:
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning silent, bare,
Ships, towers domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky.
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Neer saw I, never felt, a calm so deep.
The river glideth at his own sweet will
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still.
This sonnet is one of Wordsworths most famous poems. In some notes
written many years later, he says that the poem was Composed on the
roof of a coach (looking down, therefore)

Compare this poem to Blakes poem, also about London:

London
I wander through each chartered street

[chartered: with privileges]

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infants cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.
How the chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning church appals.
And the hapless soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlots curse
Blasts the new born infants tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

PROSE WRITERS IN THE ROMANTIC PERIOD: THE GODWINS

. WILLIAM GODWIN
William Godwins radical socio-political ideas were very influential at the Romantic
period. He presented proposals for a reformed social system in his book Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice (1793). It raised him to the level of a modern sage.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
Mary Wollstonecraft is very famous as a pioneer feminist, with her book A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman (1792), which has become a classic in womens studies. She
died five years after its publication, giving birth to Mary Shelley. The book was well
received by some as the latest treatise on female education, but it generally had a lot
of nasty criticism, especially after her death, for its progressive ideas about women.
Both Godwin and Wollstonecraft belonged to the group of British intellectuals who
supported and were influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. Yet
Wollstonecraft realized that those ideals, the changes for the improvement of the lot of
many underprivileged people, were intended only for men. The ideals of liberty,
equality and justice were understood to be applied to only one half of the population.
Thomas Paine, the famous radical philosopher who influenced the ideas of progressive
Romantic thinkers, and a close friend of both Godwin and Wollstonecraft, wrote The
Rights of Man in 1791. A year later Wollstonecraft produced what had been left out in
that book, The Rights of Woman, to prove that
reason loudly demands JUSTICE for one half of the human race
This book is full of rights that women should have had but didnt. The main right that is
claimed for is the right of education.

The most famous and influential treatise on education at the turn of the XVIII c.
was written by the French philosopher Rousseau. His ideas concerning the education
and bringing up of children were radically modern. But they were applied only to male
children. Wollstonecrafts book was partly a response to Rousseaus ideas. She defended
that girls should be educated and brought up following the same progressive principles
used for boys that is, developing their understanding, or reason, and those virtues
that strengthen their independence. She attacks Rousseau for his conservative views on
women:
Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself
independent, that she should be made a coquettish slave in order to render her a more
alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to man, whenever he chooses to relax
himself What nonsense!
Rousseaus ideas about women were the ideas that most people had about what
women should be like. In fact, A Vindication of the Rights of Women can be seen as
Wollstonecrafts analysis of why the current ideas concerning womens nature were
pure nonsense, and detrimental not only to womens development but to the whole of
society. What she found most unacceptable was the belief that the feminine
characteristics that women were brought up to develop their narcissism or
coquettishness, their extremely delicate sensibility (but not strong emotions or
passions), their obedience to and dependence on man, among others were natural.
See the following passage:
He (Dr Gregory) advises them [women] to cultivate a fondness for dress,
because a fondness for dress, he asserts, is natural to them. I am unable to comprehend
what either he or Rousseau mean, when they frequently use this indefinite term It is
not natural; but arises, like false ambition in men, from a love of power, and it is not
independent of education.
Educate women like men, says Rousseau, and the more they resemble our
sex the less power will they have over us. This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish
them to have power over men, but over themselves.
The most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the
understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in
other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it
independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result
6

from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseaus opinion respecting men: I
extend it to women.
Wollstonecrafts book became enormously influential and important for many women
writers in the XIX century and even many women writers in the first decades of the XX
century, who daring to write and publish (masculine activities), and wishing to have a
formal education from which women were excluded agreed and found support for A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. For example, George Eliot wrote an enthusiastic
essay on Wollstonecraft. Virginia Woolf, almost a century and a half after the
publication of the book, wrote an essay on Wollstonecraft, saying,
She is alive and active, she argues and experiments, we hear her voice and trace
her influence even now among the living.
Mary Wollstonecraft also wrote the (unfinished) novel The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria,
a novel in the Gothic tradition, in which the setting the mansion of despair is not a
castle but an insane asylum, where the heroine who is not at all mad has been
imprisoned by her tyrant husband. A classic quote in feminist books is:
Was not the world a vast prison and women born slaves Maria

MARY SHELLEY
The daughter of Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and Shelleys wife. She inherited both
parents radical ideas and way of life. Although she published several novels, she
became part of literary history with only her first novel, Frankenstein (1818).
Like many other books written by women in the XIX century, Frankenstein was
published anonymously. The novel was thought to have been written by a man.
M. Shelley was only 18 years old when she wrote it.
Frankenstein was a new hybrid genre, a mixture of Gothic and Science-fiction. It
soon became a best-seller, for it came at the right time, when the reading public needed
not only the horror sensations of Gothic fiction but also mental speculations. One
important magazine of the time comments on the book:

There never was a wilder story imagined; yet, like most fictions of this age, it
has an air of reality attached to it by being connected with the favourite projects and
passions of the times.
Besides reflecting ideas and fantasies of the time, there were other external
influences on her work:
-

Her parents ideas about education, society and morality.

Romantic poetry, Shelleys, Coleridges and Wordsworths.

Gothic novels.

Books on chemistry and bioloy.

All these were the conscious or external influences on Frankenstein. But many
critics point out that there were other influences which were unconscious. These
unconscious influences could help explain the strength of her book, that fact that,
although it has many technical problems as a novel, it has reached almost a
mythical status.
One of the best interpretations of this novel is by the critic Ellen Moers.
She thinks that Frankenstein is a birth myth, influenced by its creators early,
chaotic and painful experiences of motherhood.
In the XIX century, the experience of giving birth was absent from
womens literature, for the simple reason that most women writers were not
married, and the few who were, either didnt have children or died at childbirth.
Mary Shelley was a unique case: she had many babies, and it was the babies that
died, not herself. She brought to her writing the subject of birth, not in a realistic
way but as a Gothic and Science-Fiction fantasy. She used her own experience of
birth at least unconsciously to contribute to Romanticism a myth of great
originality: the mad scientist who locks himself in his laboratory and secretly
works at creating human life, although he finds that he has created a monster.
The scientist, then, horrified at his own creation, runs away and abandons the
newborn monster, who remains nameless. Here is where there can be seen a link
between Mary Shelleys own experiences of giving birth and her literary
creation: in the motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt,
dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences.
Death and birth were intermixed in her life at the time she wrote the novel.
When, at seventeen, when her first baby died, she wrote in her diary:
8

Dream that my little baby came to life again, that it had only been cold,
and we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived.
Marys own mother died while giving birth to her. Her half-sister and Shelleys
first wife committed suicide the year of the writing of the novel. Moers even
claims that,
no outside influence need be sought to explain Mary Shelleys fantasy
of the newborn as at once monstrous agent of destruction and piteous victim of
parental abandonment. The sources of its conception were the anxieties of a
woman who, as daughter, mistress and mother, was a bearer of death.
ELLEN MOERS

LITERARY WOMEN

The literature of the overreacher

A common interpretation of the novel, not based on psychological assumptions,
views it as belonging to the literature of the overreacher: the superman who
breaks through normal human limitations and defies the rules of society and the
powers of God, like the myth of Prometheus, who revolted against his creator. In
fact, the complete title of the novel is Frankenstein Or, the Modern
Prometheus. Shelley had written a long poem about the myth of Prometheus,
which influenced his wife.
Both the scientist and his creation can be seen as Prometheus. The
epigraph to the book (in the original edition) was a quote from Miltons
Paradise Lost, another myth of rebellion against the Creator:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?

THE GOTHIC NOVEL

Gothic fiction is a narrative genre that started on the second half of the XVIII
century, with the novella The Castle of Otranto (1764), written by Horace
Walpole. It flourished in the last decade of the XVIII century, with Ann
9

Radcliffes novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Ann Radcliffe is considered

to be the true founder of the genre. Its writers were called the terrorists.
Gothic fiction is generally characterised by the predominance of fantasy over
reality, the strange over the ordinary and the supernatural over the natural. It has
one clear aim: to scare, to produce the pleasurable thrill of fear. The
contemporary novelist Walter Scott compared reading Ann Radcliffe to taking
drugs. The effect of this type of fiction meant that Ann Radcliffe was the most
popular and best-paid novelist of her time.
Ann Radcliffe set the Gothic in one of its most successful and lasting ways: a
novel in which the central figure is a young woman who is a persecuted victim
(by men) and a courageous, decorous, virtuous and sensible heroine. Unlike
some later Gothic fiction, there were no supernatural elements in her fiction.
Ellen Moers thinks that Ann Radcliffe used the Gothic genre as a device to
create a heroine who was a travelling woman: a woman who moves, acts and
actively copes with problems, and who has adventures. She writes:
The Gothic novel was a device to send maidens on distant and exciting
journeys without offending the proprieties. In the power of villains, her heroines
are forced to do what they could never do alone, whatever their ambitions:
scurry up the top of pasteboard Alps, spy out exotic vistas, penetrate banditinfested forest In Mrs Radcliffes hands, the Gothic novel became a feminine
substitute for the picaresque, where heroines could enjoy all the adventures and
alarms that masculine heroes had long experienced. Literary Women
Literary history marks the ending for the cult of the Gothic at about 1820. In
1818 Jane Austens novel Northanger Abbey was published. It was a parody of
the Gothic novel, which seemed to match the feeling of the times that the literary
cult of Gothic terror was at its end. Yet many of the elements of the Gothic genre
were used in the fiction of the XIX and XX centuries. Some of those elements,
which the Gothic novel introduced, were the irrational, the supernatural, the
macabre and the cruel. These elements were exploited later in the century by
much better writers, such as a Emily Bront in Wuthering Heights
10

11

Mary Wollstonecraft.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Introduction
After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious
solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my
spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great
difference between man and woman, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken
place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the
subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management
of schools; but what has been the result? a profound conviction that the neglected
education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that
women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring
causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in
fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers
which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and
the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk,
long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this
barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books
written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human
creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate
wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by
this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few
exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler
ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.
In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have
been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially
when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false
refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same
tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism,
they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species,
when improveable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men
above the brute creation, and puts a nature sceptre in a feeble hand.

12

Yet, because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose that I mean
violently to agitate the contested question respecting the equality or inferiority of the
sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the
main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a
few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world it is observable that
the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of
nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A
degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied and it is a noble
prerogative! But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us
still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated
by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek
to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow
creatures who find amusement in their society.
()
The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet
they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who
endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend
many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments;
meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the
desire of establishing themselves, - the only way women can rise in the world, - by
marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as
such children may be expected to act: - they dress, they paint, and nickname Gods
creatures1.- Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio! Can they be expected to
govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the
world?
If then it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex, from the
prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions
that open and enlarge the soul; that the instruction which women have hitherto received
has only tended, with the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant
objects of desire mere propagators of fools! if it can be proved that in aiming to
accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their
sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty
1

Hamlet speaks to Ophelia: You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname Gods creatures, and make
your wantonness your ignorance. Hamlet

13

is over2, I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade them
[women] to become more masculine3 and respectable.
()
Chap. II
The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
To account for, and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have
been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to
aim at attaining a very different character; or, to speak explicitly, women are not
allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of
virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, there is but one way appointed
by Providence to lead mankind to either virtue or happiness.
If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in
ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of
the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong
passions and grovelling vices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of
ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the
current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a
little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper,
outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain
them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless,
for, at least, twenty years of their lives.
Thus Milton describes our first frail mother; though when he tells us that women
are formed for softness and sweet attractive grace4, I cannot comprehend his meaning,
unless, in the true Mahometan strain, he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that
we were beings only designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to
gratify the senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation.

A lively writer, I cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the
world? [Wollstonecrafts note]. Perhaps Wollstonecraft is referring to a passage in Fanny Burneys
popular novel Evelina spoken by the licentious Lord Merton: I dont know what the devil a woman lives
for after thirty: she is only in other folks way.
3
Wollstonecraft is ironically referring to what she calls exclamations against masculine women.
4
Paradise Lost. For contemplation he and valor formd, / For softness she and sweet attractive grace, /
He for God only, she for God in him.

14

How grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves
gentle, domestic brutes! For instance, the winning softness so warmly, and frequently,
recommended, that governs by obeying. What childish expressions, and how
insignificant is the being can it be an immortal? Who will condescend to govern by
such sinister methods! ()
Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of
the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in
other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it
independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result
from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseaus opinion respecting men: I
extend it to women, and confidently assert that they have been drawn out of their sphere
of false refinement, and not by an endeavour to acquire masculine qualities. Still the
regal homage which they receive is so intoxicating, that till the manners of the times are
changed, and formed on more reasonable principles, it may be impossible to convince
them that the illegitimate power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse,
and that they must return to nature and equality, if they wish to secure the placid
satisfaction that unsophisticated affections impart. But for this epoch we must wait
wait, perhaps, till kings and nobles, enlightened by reason, and, preferring the real
dignity of man to childish state, throw off their gaudy hereditary trappings: and if then
women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty they will prove that they have less
mind than man.
I may be accused of arrogance; still I must declare what I firmly believe, that all
the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners from
Rousseau to Dr. Gregory5, have contributed to render women more artificial, weak
characters, than they would otherwise have been; and, consequently, more useless
members of society.
()
Women are, therefore, to be considered either as moral beings, or so weak that
they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men.
Let us examine this question. Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for
a moment, feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her
natural cunning, and made a coquettish slave in order to render her a more alluring
5

Dr. John Gregory, Scottish physician whose A Fathers Legacy to His Daughters (1774) was one of the
most popular treatises on female education of the time.

15

object of desire, a sweeter companion to man, whenever he chooses to relax himself. He

carries the arguments, which he pretends to draw from the indications of nature, still
further, and insinuates that truth and fortitude, the corner stones of all human virtue,
should be cultivated with certain restrictions, because, with respect to the female
character, obedience is the grand lesson which ought to be impressed with unrelenting
rigour6.
What nonsense! When will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to
puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject!7 ()
He [Dr. Gregory] advises them to cultivate a fondness for dress, because a
fondness for dress, he asserts, is natural to them. I am unable to comprehend what either
he or Rousseau mean, when they frequently use this indefinite term [natural]. If they
told us that in a pre-existent state the soul was fond of dress, and brought this inclination
with it into a new body, I should listen to them with a half smile, as I often do when I
hear a rant about innate elegance. But if he only meant to say that the exercise of the
faculties will produce this fondness I deny it. It is not natural; but arises, like false
ambition in men, from a love of power.
Chap. IV
Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman is Reduced by Various
Causes
()
I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial
attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly
supporting their own superiority. It is not condescension to bow to an inferior. So
ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern
6

mile: What is most wanted in a woman is gentleness, formed to obey a creature so imperfect as man, a
creature often vicious and always faulty, she should early learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the
wrongs inflicted on her by her husband without complaint.
7.John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women (1869). Chap. I.:
7

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion

which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all
on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been
constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That
the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes the
legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong itself, and now one of the chief
hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of
perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the
other.

16

my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a
handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only
moved a pace or two.
()
Mankind, including every description, wish to be loved and respected by
something; and the common herd will always take the nearest road to the completion of
their wishes. The respect paid to wealth and beauty is the most certain, and unequivocal;
and, of course, will always attract the vulgar eye of common minds. Abilities and
virtues are absolutely necessary to raise men from the middle rank8 of life into notice;
and the natural consequence is notorious, the middle rank contains most virtue and
abilities. Men have thus, in one station, at least an opportunity of exerting themselves
with dignity, and of rising by the exertions which really improve a rational creature; but
the whole female sex are, till their character is formed9, in the same condition as the
rich: for they are born, I now speak of a state of civilization, with certain sexual
privileges, and whilst they are gratuitously granted them, few will ever think of works
of supererogation, to obtain the esteem10 of a small number of superior people.
When do we hear of women who, starting out of obscurity, boldly claim respect
on account of their great abilities or daring virtues? Where are they to be found? To
be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and
approbation, are all the advantages which they seek11.
() Educate women like men, says Rousseau, and the more they resemble
our sex the less power will they have over us.12 This is the very point I aim at. I do not
wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.
()
But, I will venture to assert that their reason will never acquire sufficient
strength to enable it to regulate their conduct, whilst the making an appearance in the
world is the first wish of the majority of mankind. To this weak wish the natural
affections, and the most useful virtues are sacrificed. Girls marry merely to better
themselves, to borrow a significant vulgar phrase, and have such perfect power over
8

Middle rank/station: middle class

in the distant future
10
Social recognition, approval, positive regard.
11
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
12
mile. Rousseau, of course, is not advocating equal education: he has made the point that women have
sexual power over men. If women were educated, they would lose their sway, presumably an undesirable
state of affairs for them.
9

17

their hearts as not to permit themselves to fall in love till a man with a superior fortune
offers13.
Chap. IX
Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established
in Society
Women, in particular, all want to be ladies. Which is simply to have
nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but loiter with easy grace;
surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools and chronicle small beer14. No.
Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses.
()
They might, also, study politics ()
Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue, if they were educated in a
more orderly manner, which might save them from common and legal prostitution.
Women would not then marry for a support (); nor would an attempt to earn their own
subsistence, a most laudable one! sink them to the level of those poor abandoned
creatures who live by prostitution. For are not milliners and mantua-makers15 reckoned
the next class? The few employments open to women, so far from being liberal, are
menial; and when a superior education enables them to take charge of the education of
children as governesses, they are not treated like the tutors of sons () But as women
educated like gentlewomen, are never designed for the humiliating situation which
necessity sometimes forces them to fill; these situations are considered in the light of a
degradation16.
Chap. XII
On National Education
() Women have been allowed to remain in ignorance, and slavish dependence,
many, very many years, and still we hear of nothing but their fondness of pleasure and
sway, their preference of rakes and soldiers, their childish attachment to toys, and the
vanity that makes them value accomplishments more than virtues.

13

Wollstonecraft considered that this love-less marriage for money and social status was legal
prostitution
14
Othello
15
Dressmakers
16
Wollstonecraft had spent one year as governess

18

History brings forward a fearful catalogue of the crimes which their cunning has
produced, when the weak slaves have had sufficient address to over-reach their masters.
() the state of warfare which subsists between the sexes, makes them employ those
wiles, that often frustrate the more open designs of force.
When, therefore, I call women slaves, I mean in a political and civil sense; for,
indirectly they obtain too much power, and are debased by their exertions to obtain
illicit sway.
Let an enlightened nation then try what effect reason would have to bring them
back to nature, and their duty; and allowing them to share the advantages of education
and government with man, see whether they will become better, as they grow wiser and
become free. They cannot be injured by the experiment; for it is not in the power of man
to render them more insignificant than they are at present.
To render this practicable, day schools, for particular ages, should be established
by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together.

19

The intellectual and historical background of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Carol H. Poston wrote:
People have gone to great lengths to ridicule ideas about equality; it is
interesting to watch the scurrilous17 prose in which they do that. But it is also interesting
to watch other minds engage with Wollstonecrafts and take courage themselves,
whether it be a George Eliot18 () or an Emma Goldman lauding the passion and pluck
of a woman who faced down formidable odds much like Goldmans own. Recent
scholars point out that the Vindication of the Rights of Woman was generally well
received when it first appeared, for it was seen as the latest treatise on female
education, to sue the phrasing of Mary Hays, Wollstonecrafts friend and protg, who
reviewed it favourably for the Analytical Review. We should remember the
revolutionary social and intellectual milieu in which it appeared in 1792. There had
been an uprising in the American colonies that had led to independence, a revolution
was exploding in France, and controversial radical ideas were afoot in England. Even a
call for equality for all social classes was receiving a respectful hearing, so how much
more respectable might seem a thoughtful request that women be educated equally.
People had been pleading for womens education for at least a century. ()
Several scholars pointed out that it was only after her death, and then only after
the publication of a book that was meant to exonerate and explain her, that
Wollstonecrafts reputation became an issue. Her grieving husband, William Godwin,
wrote an apologia for his dead wifes life and work, A Memoir of the Author of the
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Thus were disseminated details about her life, such
as her infatuation with the painter Henry Fuseli, her liaison with Gilbert Imlay in Paris,
and her suicide attempts facts that had not perhaps been widely known or cared about.
This proved to be the incendiary material that future critics would use against her, and
from which future defenders would try to exonerate her. Her personality had become an
issue, and she a cause clbre.
Ralph M. Wardle, writing about the fact that the overwhelming majority of
Englishwomen of Wollstonecrafts time had known little economic and intellectual
freedom, notes:
Most of the advantages which their sex had gained during the late Middle Ages
and the Renaissance, largely because of worship of the Virgin, had been swept away in
England with the triumph of Puritanism. Devout Christian gentlemen could find good
Biblical precedent for their disdainful attitude toward women: St. Paul had enjoined on
the sex the virtue of silence and submission as a means of atoning for their share in
mans fall from grace. Actually the gentlemen may have been a bit afraid of women and
their subtle powers. So at least one would gather from the statute which Parliament
passed in the year 1770, declaring that all women of whatever age, rank, profession, or
degree, whether virgin maid or widow, that shall from and after such Act impose upon,
seduce, and betray into matrimony any of His Majestys subjects by means of scent,
paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops,
high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force
against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage upon conviction shall
stand null and void. Moreover, the common law of England ruled that whatever
property a woman owned before marriage or might receive thereafter became
17
18

very rude and insulting

And Virginia Woolf

20

automatically her husbands. Sir William Blackstone19, in the chapter Of Husband and
Wife in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, explained the ruling by
maintaining that when women became one with their husbands they lost their legal
identity; and he claimed that the law was designed for womens protection and benefit.
Dr. Johnson, however, had a different explanation: Nature has given women so much
power, he declared, that the law has wisely given them little. But whatever the
reason, the fact remained that English common law allowed women little real freedom.
()
The majority of women of the eighteenth century accepted their inferior status
without complaint. () Most intelligent women would probably have agreed with Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, who insisted that learning is necessary to the happiness of
women, and ignorance the common foundation of their errors, but who advised that a
young girl conceal what learning she had with as much solicitude as she would hide
crookedness or lameness. Women were so used to being treated with condescension or
disdain that they had grown servile. They accepted subjection as their lot in life and
stifled whatever rebellion they felt. To be feminine was to be docile.
The conventional attitude toward women was summed up in two very popular
books of the day: Dr. James Fordyces Sermons to Young Women (1765) and Dr. John
Gregorys Fathers Legacy to His Daughters (1774). They sold by the thousands; and
no wonder, for in them girls could learn specifically what two Christian gentlemen of
unquestionable moral standards believed to be the duties of women that is to say, how
they could render themselves pleasing to men.
Dr. Fordyce, the brother of Marys friend Dr. George Fordyce, recommended
the retiring graces. He urged his reader to be meek, timid, yielding, complacent,
sweet, benign, and tender, modelling themselves on Miltons Eve (before the
Temptation, of course). ()

[Like angels, women, he wrote, should be outside the public sphere: the province of
men]
You yourselves, I think, will allow that war, commerce, politics, exercises of
strength and dexterity, abstract philosophy, and all the abstruser sciences, are most
properly the province of men. I am sure that those masculine women, that would plead
for your sharing any part of this province equally with us, do not understand your true
interests.
()
The women for whom such books were written were certainly not slaves. They
had their little liberties and their little triumphs, but always were obliged to confine
themselves to such liberties and triumphs as were approved in the code by which they
lived. They were bound, as Mary said, in silken fetters.
()
Mary was not alone in deploring the position of women or in blaming their
faulty education for it. For over a hundred years alert Englishmen had been arguing that
women should be given a better education to render them more rational beings. As early
as 1673 Mrs. Makin had published An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of
Gentlewomen, and in 1694 Mary Astell had advocated, in her Serious Proposal to
Ladies, a sort of convent where serious-minded women might retire for study and
contemplation. Three years later Daniel Defoe had included in his Essay on Projects a
19

Eighteenth-century English legal commentator and jurist.

21

suggestion for an academy for women, where they might study whatever subjects they
chose. And he observed: We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence,
while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be
guilty of less than ourselves.
()
By far the most vigorous champion of womens rights in the first half of the
eighteenth century was a woman who signed herself Sophia and who is sometimes
identified with Lady Mary W. Montagu. In her first book, Woman Not Inferior to Man
(1739), Sophia argued not only for a better education for women but also for an
independent position in society. She maintained that women had achieved less than men
only because they had been given less education and went so far as to refer to her sex
as slaves. But she believed that women wee inherently more responsible than men and
that, if relieved of their bondage to household duties, they would make good teachers,
physicians, lawyers (because they are good talkers!), even soldiers and more sensible
philosophers. () acknowledging the faults of women but blaming them directly on
inadequate education and the tyranny of men.
() She [Mary] was certainly familiar with another treatment of the subject, Catharine
Macaulays Letters on Education; in fact she had reviewed the book for the Analytical
with enthusiastic approval. And there can be no doubt that she was considerably
indebted to it for the formation of her own thesis20. For though Letters on Education was
not primarily concerned with the education of women, Mrs. Macaulay had a good deal
to say on the subject: she denied that there was any fundamental difference in character
between the sexes and maintained that they should be given the same education. She
also attributed womens weaknesses to their faulty education and social position,
advocated that they be taught not only light accomplishments but solid virtues, and
urged that they developed more strength so that they might be better mothers. Mrs.
Macaulay deplored the common practice of training girls only to please their husbands;
and she demonstrated that, because they had been denied their rights, they had contrived
by ignoble means to achieve a kind of sovereignty by utilizing their powers of pleasing.
Yet she did not despair of her sex; she believed that they would gladly sacrifice their
privileges if they were granted their rights. And she warned men that, if they wished
women to improve, they must improve themselves; specifically she demanded that men
be modest as the first step toward improvement in women. Obviously Mrs. Macaulay
was far ahead of her generation in her thinking on this subject. Obviously, too, Mary
had studied her book attentively, for in The Rights of Woman she was to repeat and
develop almost every point which Mrs. Macaulay had made.

20

After Marys death her friend Mary Hays wrote: It is but justice to add, that the principles of [The
Rights of Woman] are to be found in Catharine Macaulays Treatise on Education

22

WILLIAM BLAKE
Mary21
Sweet Mary, the first time she ever was there,
Came into the Ball room among the Fair;
The Young Men & Maidens around her throng,
And these are the words upon every tongue:
An Angel is here from the heavenly Climes,
Or again does return the Golden times.
Her eyes outshine every brilliant ray,
She opens her lips tis the Month of May.
Mary moves in soft beauty & conscious delight
To augment with sweet smiles all the joys of the Night,
Nor once blushes to own to the rest of the Fair
That sweet Love & Beauty are worthy our care.
In the Morning the Villagers rose with delight
And repeated with pleasure the joys of the night;
And Mary rose among Friends to be free,
But no Friend from henceforward thou, Mary, shalt see.
Some said she was proud, some calld her a whore,
And some when she passed by shut to the door;
A damp cold oer her, her blushes all fled;
Her lilies & roses are blighted & shed.

10

15

20

O, why was I born with a different Face?

Why was I not born like this Envious race?
Why did Heaven adorn me with bountiful hand,
And then set me down in an envious land?
To be weak as a Lamb & smooth as a dove,
And not to raise Envy, is calld Christian Love;
But if you raise Envy your Merits to blame
For planting such spite in the weak & the tame.
I will humble my Beauty, I will not dress fine,
I will keep from the Ball, & my Eyes shall not shine;
And if any Girls Lover forsakes her for me,
Ill refuse him my hand & from Envy be free.
She went out in Morning attird plain & neat;
Proud Marys gone Mad, said the Child in the Street;
She went out in Morning in plain neat attire,
And came home in Evening bespatterd with mire.

25

30

35

21

This poem was written between 1801 and 1805. Most Blake scholars acknowledge some influence on
Blake by Wollstonecraft, and it is possible to assume that this poem is directed to her memory.

23

She trembled & wept, sitting on the Bed side;

She forgot it was Night & she trembled & cried;
She forgot it was Night, she forgot it was Morn;
Her soft Memory imprinted with Faces of Scorn,

40

With Faces of Scorn & with Eyes of disdain

Like foul Fiends inhabiting Marys mild Brain;
She remembers no Face like the Human Divine.
All faces have Envy, sweet Mary, but thine:
And thine is a Face of sweet Love in despair,
And thine is a Face of mild sorrow & care,
And thine is a Face of wild terror & fear
That shall never be quiet till laid on its bier.

45

24

FRANKENSTEIN (1818)

MARY SHELLEY

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of the philosopher
William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical feminist writer, author
of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Authors Introduction to the Standard Novels Edition (1831)
The publishers of the Standard Novels, in selecting Frankenstein for one of their series,
expressed a wish that I should furnish them with some account of the origin of the story.
I am the more willing to comply, because I shall thus give a general answer to the
question, so very frequently asked me, How I, then a young girl, came to think of and
to dilate upon so very hideous an idea? It is true that I am very averse to bringing
myself forward in print; but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former
production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connexion with my
authorship alone, I can scarcely accuse myself of a personal intrusion.
()
In the summer of 1816 we visited Switzerland and became the neighbours of Lord
Byron. At first we spent pleasant hours on the lake or wandering on its shores; and Lord
Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us
who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed
in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven
and earth, whose influences we partook with him.
But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to
the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from the German into French fell
into our hands ()
We will each write a ghost story, said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded
to. ()
I busied myself to think of a story a story to rival those which had excited us to this
task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling
horror one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken
the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be
unworthy of its name. ()
Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. I have found it!
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had
haunted my midnight pillow. ()
At first I thought but of a few pages of a short tale, but Shelley urged me to develop
the idea at greater length. I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor
scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement it would
never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world.
And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper.
Chapter 5
IT was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.
With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life
around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my
candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw

25

the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion
agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch
whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in
proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful Great God! His yellow
skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a
lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only
formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same
colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and
straight black lips.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human
nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into
an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it
with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of
the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure
the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room.()
Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again
endued with animation could not be as hideous as that wretch. ()
() I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid
the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not
dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although
drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky.
I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily
exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any
clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness
of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Coleridges Ancient Mariner

Chapter 6
Clerval then put the following letter into my hands. It was from my own
Elizabeth:
() Since you left us, but one change has taken place in our little household. Do
you remember on what occasions Justine Moritz entered our family? Probably you do
not; I will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Moritz, her mother, was
a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been
the favourite of her father, but through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure
her, and after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this, and
when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our
house. The republican institutions of our country [Switzerland] have produced simpler

26

and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it.
Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the
lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and
moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France or
England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition
which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a sacrifice of
the dignity of a human being.
Chapt. 7
While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty
step. This noble war in the sky elevated by spirits () I perceived in the gloom a figure
which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently; I could
not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object and discovered its shape
plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than
belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon to
whom I had given life. () Two years had nearly elapsed since the night on which he
first received life, and was this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a
depraved wretch whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my
brother?
No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the night,
which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel the inconvenience of the
weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair. I considered the being
whom I had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect
purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my
own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave and forced to destroy all that was
dear to me.
Chapter 10
As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing
towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over crevices in the ice, among which
I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of
man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was
quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, s the shape came nearer
(sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled
with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal
combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain
and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human
eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance,
and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation
and contempt.
Devil, I exclaimed, do you dare approach me? And do not you fear the fierce
vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! Or rather,
stay, that I may trample you to dust! And, oh! That I could, with the extinction of your
miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!
I expected this reception, said the daemon. All men hate the wretched; how,
then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator,
detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the

27

annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do
your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you
will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I
will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.
Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a
vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation; come
on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed.
My rage was beyond bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which
can arm one being against the existence of another.
He easily eluded me and said Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you
give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek
to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is
dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than
thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted
to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile
to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.
Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom
thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection is most due. Remember that I am thy
creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest
from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably
excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I
shall again be virtuous.
Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me;
we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall.
How can I move thee? Will no intreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye
upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me,
Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not
alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your
fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me. The desert mountains
and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice,
which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not
grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings. ()
Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale; when you
have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear
me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own
defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of
murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh,
praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me and then, if
you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.
Chap. 13 [the monsters narrative]
But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no
mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now
a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance
I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being
resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question
recurred, to be answered only with groans.

28

Chapter 14 [about Mary Shelleys own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.]

Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by
the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie,
who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother,
who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She
instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher
powers of intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of
Muhammad. This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of
Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within
the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, illsuited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation
of virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian and remaining in a country where
women were allowed to take a rank in society was enchanting to her.
Chapter 15 [The monsters narrative]
I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books [Miltons Paradise Lost,
Plutarchs Lives and Goethes Sorrows of Werter] .They produced in me an infinity of
new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk
me into the lowest dejection. In the Sorrows of Werter, the gentle and domestic
manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, which had for their
object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors
and with the wants which were forever alive in my own bosom. ()
As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and
condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings
concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with
and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and
related to none. The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my
annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who
was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions
continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.()
But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had
read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every
feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his
creatures [fallen angels] was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations,
as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link
to any other being in existence, but his state was far different from mine in every other
respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and
prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse
with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched,
helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my
condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of
envy rose within me. () Hateful day when I received life! I exclaimed in agony.
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from
me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but
my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan
had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and

29

abhorred. () I remembered Adams supplication to his Creator. But where was

mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.
[Dialogue with a blind man]
() I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around and I have no
relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people people to whom I go have never
seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the
world forever.
Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of
men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and
charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not
despair.
They are kind they are the most excellent creatures in the world; but,
unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good dispositions; my life has been
hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes,
and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable
monster.
Chapter 16 [the monsters narrative]
CURSED, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not
extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not:
despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge.
() I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils () I, like the arch-fiend, bore a
hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees,
spread havoc and destruction around me () the sick impotence of despair. There was
none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I
feel kindness towards my enemies? () the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my
bosom, and I did not strive to control them. ()
As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly
dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty
avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason
and reflection. ( ) I resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me,
hated and despised, every country must be equally horrible. ()
But how was I to direct myself? () You had endowed me with perceptions and
passions and then cast me abroad an object of scorn and horror of mankind. But on you
only had I any claim for pity and redress22, and from you I determined to seek that
justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form.
() The mildness of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and
bitterness. () the agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred
from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.
Chapter 17
() If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion: the
love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes () My vices are the children of
forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in
22

redress: to correct sth that is unfair or wrong. To put right: to redress an injustice.

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communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become
linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded.
Chapter 18 [WORDSWORTH]
Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words and to
dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in
the very poetry of nature. His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the
sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship
was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for
only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his
eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration,
he loved with ardour:
The sounding cataract
Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,
The Mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to him
An appetite: a feeling, a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowd from the eye.
Wordsworths Tintern Abbey

Chapter 19 [Frankensteins narrative]

I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory
of the past and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful
happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind, and if I
was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study
of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man could always interest
my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a basted tree; the
bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I
shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to
others and intolerable to myself. ()Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed
me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. When these
thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him
as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I
had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was
guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal
as that of crime. ()
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Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation [creating a

female monster, a companion for the fiend: a filthy process in which I was
engaged my heart often sickened], immersed in a solitude where nothing
could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was
engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless and nervous. Every moment
I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the
ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so
much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow
creatures lest when alone he should come to claim his companion.
In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably
advanced. I looked forwards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope,
which I dared not trust myself to question but which as intermixed with obscure
forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

Chapter 20 [Frankensteins narrative]

() I left the house, the horrid scene of the last nights contention [he
broke his promise to create for the monster a female companion: a sister; the
monster rebels and threatens him with destruction], and walked on the beach of
the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my
fellow creatures ().
I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved
and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I
lay down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep sleep. () The sleep into
which I now sank refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged
to a race of human beings like myself.
Chapter 22
The tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought
madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity
possessed me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and
despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at any one, but sat motionless,
bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me. () Ah! It is well for
the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. ()
My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us,
but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom
we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small but bound close by
the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened
your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom
we have been so cruelly deprived.
Such were the reasons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the
threat returned.
Last chapter (24) [Frankensteins narrative]

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When younger, said he, I believed myself destined for some great enterprise.
My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me
for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported
me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw
away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures.
When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of
a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common
projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my
career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and
hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am
chained in an eternal hell.

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