Romantic literature Frankenstein and The Fall of the House of Usher-similarities

Literary movements are defined by large groups of writers and their masterpieces;masterpieces that have in common features of aesthetic and ideologic nature.Critics have claimed that each literary movement is a complex process and that there is no such thing as a pure literary movement. Romanticism appeared in Western Europe in the second half of the 18th century and expanded thanks to the rising of a new class -les nouveaux riches- and the diminished interest for Classical works.Romanticism started out as a reaction against reason,or better said scientific rationalization of nature and aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenement.It was the first lirerary movement ever to make its presence felt throughout most parts of the world and it was embodied most strongly in the visual arts,music and literature. The English adjective romantic derives from two French nouns used in the Middle Ages: roman and roman(u)nt ,referring to a literary work based on imagination,a tale from the Court,but also a book that brought something new,different from the written register that was before.At the end of the 17th century,romance had a non-appreciative meaning (both in France and England),leading to the idea of bizar or exaggerate.In 18th century in France,romantique began to mean melancholic, delicate etc. Novalis used the verb to romanticize to explain how the vulgar is given a higher meaning,how the ordinary receives a mysterious prestige,how the known wrappes itself in unknown and how the transcendental ties itself to permanency. In the preface of Cromwell (a literary manifest of the French Romanticism),Victor Hugo stated pretty clearly that there were neither rules, nor role models to follow,only a new doctrine which ensures the right to liberty of expressing oneself.This feedom in writing was anticipated by the
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movement called Sturm und Drang and by Schillers work On Nave and Sentimental Poetry.Later on,two German writers-the Shlegel brothers-imposed the term romantic and gave a definition to the artist of this kind and the romantic tendency:the artist is hungry for what is infinite and the romantic spirit of the period is characterized by melancholy. In the first decades of the 19th century the main interest of the Romantics was to build up their doctrine in opposition with the rules of Classicism;thus,the ideal,static,objective world of the Classics with their balanced and moral man was in opposition with the dynamic and subjective Romantic universe. The Romantic character is overwhelmed by the situations that appear and he is in a constant search for completeness.Unlike the Classical writers,the Romantics did not settle for a simple focus on nature;they actually reinterpreted it through their impressions,they made full use of their subjectiveness.This is how cold thinking was replaced by passion.That is the reason why the Romantics are considered bold figures craving for adventure.It is precisely this hunger for adventure that makes them choose as setting for their works places like the dream world ,the historical past etc. What defines a Romantic character is:the torment,the discontent,the inner conflict,the desire to push the limits.He often has the tendency of being pessimistic and often feels incapable of doing something.The Romantic character can belong to any social class,he must be complex in Hugos opinion; good and evil must coexist in him.Romantic literature abounded in contrasts,in extremes and writers highlighted even unpleasant parts of reality,making them look interesting,anticipating in this way symbolism. In contrast with Classicism,Romanticism deals with the infinit of space or the great abyss,with the huge cosmos represented by details like the skies,the stars,the oceans,the lakes .The Romantic is concerned with the investigation of the depths of the human soul,for man is also considered a universe at a far more smaller scale. The freedom present in ideas is doubled by a freedom at the level of structure.The Romantic writers agree with the mixture between literary genres or ways of narrating and they show their preference for elegies,satyres,oddes,historical dramas and short-storries.
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In the preface to Victor Hugos drama Cromwell,the author believes that art has a divine role for the Romantics:The purpose of art is almost divine:to resurrect ,if we are talking about history;to create,if we are referring to poetry.Hugo points out in the same preface the duality of human nature,the intimate and creative alliance between the grotesque and the sublime;a quality that makes the Romantic character surpass any boundary and disobey rules.The modern sense of a Romantic character can also be expressed in Byronic ideals of a gifted,perhaps misunderstood loner,creatively following the dictates of his inspiration rather than those of his contemporary society. The main Romantic themes are:love,nature (it reveals the characters inner feelings),history,time,life and death,the creation,the craving for perfection etc.And the Romantic motifs would be:the dream,the solitude,elements related to water and the skies,the darkness,the demonic,the dead that come back to life,the suffering etc. The Romantic movement validaded strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience,placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation,horror and terror,and even awe-provoked by a confrontation with the untamed nature and its picturesque qualities. Strangely enough,two Romantic works that seem to have a great deal of things in common are Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Edgar Alan Poes The Fall of the House of Usher.Despite the different narrative perspective,the different views of the authors and the way they consider a piece of literature should look like, Frankenstein and The Fall of the House of Usher can find common points at chapters like the setting,the general uneasiness of the characters, illness, decay,death,the tragic ending and the eye-witness character (who sees the tragedy happen and survives after it). Edgar Alan Poes prose is known to be the expression of terror.Illness and death have represented fascinating topics for him;37 of his tales deal with the triumph of the invisible worm (as Blake would say) and that is the reason why Camille Mauclair qualified Poe as a mystic of death.

The universe that Poe creates seems to be unreal;placed beyond Time and Space,it sometimes lacks laws of physics to govern it.In The Fall of the House of Usher,the setting almost demands a dreadful element,whereas in Frankenstein this element is forced by Victors desire to push the human boundaries. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in Phenomenologie de la perception that what guaranties the menthal health of a man is not his judgment,but the structure of the place he lives in.What turns hallucination into a myth is the narrowing of ones living place.Poe applies this rule to his narrative,because in his opinion a smaller universe is absolutely necessary for the larger impact of an isolated event.The twin brothers-Roderick and Madelene-are living in a mansion that they hadnt abandoned for years,near the mansion there is this pond placed as some sort of barrier and after the pond there are the Usher domains.From the very beginning ,the reader is aware of the sense of death and decay.Even the narrator,Rodericks childhood companion,describes a sense of insuferble gloom which pervaded his spirit as he approached the House of Usher.Every detail of the story,from the opening description of the dark rooms of the house to the unearthly storm which accompanies Madelines return from the tomb,helps to convey the terror that overwhelms and finally destroys the fragile mind of Roderick Usher.One approach to
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understanding the true significance of the story lies in the many connections that Poe establishes for the reader.Roderick and Madeline are not just brother and sister but twins who share sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature which connect his mental disintegration to her physical decline.As Madelines mysterious illness approaches physical paralysis,Rodericks mental agitation takes the form of a morbid acuteness of the senses that separates his body from the physical world making all normal sensations painful: []the most insipid food was alone endurable[];the odors of all flowers were oppressive;his eyes were tortured by even a faint of light[]. Besides the fact that Roderick and Madeline are not just twins but represent the mental and physical components of a single being,there is also a conection between the family mansion and the remaining members who live within.Roderick has developed a theory that the stones of the house have consciousness ,and that they embody the fate of the usher family.The crack in the Usher mansion which is at first barely discernible by the narrator,symbolically suggests a flaw or fundamental slit in the twin personality of Roderick and Madeline and foretells the final ruin of both family and mansion. Poes obsession for time is even more great than his obsession for space.Victor Gioscia came up with the concept to be under time,meaning to live a different kind of level,to feel the sour taste of decay. Poe explores the inner workings of the human imagination but,at the same time,cautions the reader about the destructive dangers within.When fantasy suppresses reality and the physical self,as in Rodericks case what results is madness and mental death.Madelines return and actual death reunites the twin natures of their single being,claiming Roderick as a victim to the terrors that he had anticipated. The house becomes the symbolic embodiment of this individual.The fissure or the crack in the decayed mansion,that is noted by the narrator in the beginning of the story,represents an irreconcilable fracture in the individuals personality.Roderick represents the intellect,while the portion of personality that we refer to as the senses is represented by Madeline. The true focus of this story is the narrators reaction to the strange events.He makes a journey into the underworld of the mind and is nearly destroyed by it;however he manages to escape and turns to watch as the house crumbles into the deep and dank tarn.Seeing what happens at the end,he flees in terror for his own sanity.
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Between this tale and Frankenstein there are also two other things worth mentioning:the forces of nature in both woks are very powerful and family is in the center of the narration (the members of both the Ushers and Frankensteins are dying). Mary Shelleys novel is the result of a grotesque vision she had about a man giving life to a hideous creature.The night when Victor Frankenstein awoke the monster was o stormy night,similar to the windy and terrifying night Roderick found out that he buried his sister alive. A prevailing theme in this novel,just like in The Fall of the House of Usher is loneliness and the effects that loneliness has on humans.This theme is explored through the thoughts and experiences of the three main characters:Walton,Frankenstein and the monster.The theme was created most likely because Mary Shelley herself was quite depressed and lonely.The letters at the beginning of the story are full of Waltons feelings of loneliness and his great adventure begins to lose its lust and appeal.Victor experiences fear and anxiety throughout the book.In the beginning of the story Victors work separated him from his family.He spent many years in isolation.When his family and friends began to die later in the story,these unhealthy feelings intensify.He said: This state of mind preyed upon my health,which has entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained.I shunned the face of man;all sound of joy and complacency was torture to me;solitude was my only consolation-deep,dark,death-like solitude. Frankenstein is the story of a doctor whose brilliant mind gets the better of him.The premise of this novel allows the reader to hear the story not only from the perspective of the tragic Dr. Frankenstein,but also from that of his listener,Captain Walton(who also was fascinated by the natural sciences).

Victor is the eldest son of a wealthy Genevese man,Alphonse,and his young wife,Caroline.He grows up in the perfect family with a happy childhood and a constant and devoted companion in his adopted cousin,Elizabeth.He is sensitive,intelligent,and passionate about his interests and becomes absorbed in the quest to find out what creates life.This is what makes him lose his privileged condition,his dignity as a human being.Dr. Frankenstein is like a structure that,by the end of the novel degrades,collapses.in this respect he is similar to Roderick Usher. While away at college in Ingolstadt Victor creates a being from scavenged corpse parts and gives it life,but is repulsed by its hideousness once it lives.

Some of the themes encountered in Frankenstein are:the dangerous knowledge,the sublime nature,the monstruosity,the secrecy. The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein,as Victor attempts to surge beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life.Likewise,Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous human exploration by endeavouring to reach the North Pole.This ruthless pursuit of knowledge,of the light,proves dangerous,as Victors act of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him,and Walton
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finds himself perilously trapped between sheets of ice.Whereas Victors obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death,Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission,having learned from Victors example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be. The sublime natural world,embraced by Romanticism as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual,initially offers characters the possibility of spiritual renewal.Filled with remorse and full of depression after the deaths of William and Justine,for which he feels responsible,Victor heads to the mountains to lift his spirits.The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel,but for Victor,the natural worlds power to console him no matter where he goes.By the end,as Victor chases the monster obsessively,nature,in the form of the Arctic desert,functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal struggle against the monster. The theme of monstruosity pervades the entire novel,as the monster lies at the center of the action.Eight feet tall and hideously ugly,the monster is rejected by society.However,his monstrosity results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation,which involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange chemicals.He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark,supernatural workings. One can argue that Victor himself is a kind of monster,as his ambition,secrecy,and selfishness alienate him from human society.Ordinary on the outside,he may be the true monster inside,as he is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation.Finally,many critics have described the novel itself as monstrous,a stitched-together combination of different voices,texts,and tenses. Victor consideres that the secrets of science,once discovered,must be jealously guarded.He considers M. Krempe,the natural philosopher he meets at Ingolstadt,a model scientist: an uncouth man,but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.Victors entire obsession with creating life is shrouded in secrecy,and his obsession with destroying the monster remains eqully secret until Walton hears his tale. Whereas Victor continues in his secrecy out of shame and guilt,the monster is forced into seclusion by his grotesque appearance.Walton serves as the final confessor for both,and their tragic relationship becomes immortalized in Waltons letters.In confessing all just before he dies,Victor escapes the
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stifling secrecy that ruined his life;likewise,the monster takes advantage of Waltons presence to forge a human connection,hoping desperately that at last someone will understand and emphasize with his miserable existence. Frankenstein is overflowing with texts:letters,notes,journals,inscriptions and books fill the novel,sometimes nestled inside each other,other times simply alluded to or quoted.Waltons letters envelop the entire tale;Victors story fits inside Waltons letters;the monsters story fits inside Victors;and the love story of Felix and Safie and references to Paradise Lost fit inside the monsters story.This profusion of texts is an important aspect of the narrative structure,as the various writings serve as concrete manifestations of characters attitudes and emotions. Language plays an enormous role in the monsters development.By hearing and watching the peasants,the monster learns to speak and read,which enables him to understand the manner of his creation,as described in Victors journal.He later leaves notes for Victor along the chase into the northern ice,inscribing words in trees and on rocks,turning nature itself into a writing surface. For a novel written by the daughter of an important feminist, Frankenstein lacks strong female characters.The novel is littered with passive women who suffer calmly and then expire:Caroline Beaufort is a self-sacrificing mother who dies taking care of her adopted daughter;Justine is executed for murder despite her innocence;the creation of the female monster is aborted by Victor because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated;Elizabeth waits,impatient but helpless,for Victor to return to her,and she is eventually murdered by the monster.One can argue that Shelley renders her female characters so passive and subjects them to such ill treatment in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and the monster exhibit. The character of Victor changes over the course of the novel from an innocent young man fascinated by the prospects of science into a disillusioned,guilt-ridden man determined to destroy the fruits of his arrogant scientific endeavor.Wheter as a result of his desire to attain the godlike power of creating new life or his avoidance of the public arenas in which science is usually conducted,Victor is doomed by a lack of humanness.He cuts himself off from the world and and eventually commits himself entirely to an animalistic obsession with revenging himself upon the monster.
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The monster created by Frankenstein is animated by a mysterious spark.He enters life with the mind of a newborn.Abandoned by his creator and confused,he tries to integrate himself into society,only to be shunned universally.He is not a purely evil being from the start.The monsters eloquent narration of events (as provided by Victor) reveals his remarkable sensitivity and benevolence.Torn between vengefulness and compassion,the monster ends up lonely and tormented by remorse.Even the death of his creator offers him only bittersweet relief:joy because Victor has caused him so much suffering,sadness because Victor is the only person with whom he has had any sort of relationship. Captain Walton functions as the conduit through which the reader hears the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.He feels deeply sorry about the death of Victor,a man with whom he felt a strong,meaningful friendship beginning to form.In his ultimate decision toterminate his treacherous pursuit,Walton serves as a foil (someone whose traits or actions contrast with,and thereby highlight,those of another character) to Victor,either not obsessive enough to risk almost certain death or not courageous enough to allow his passion to drive him.

Going back to Poe,we can say that The Fall of the House of Usher is considered his most famous work of prose. This highly unsettling macabre work is considered as the masterpiece of American Gothic literature. Indeed, as in many of his tales, Poe borrows much from the Gothic tradition. Still, as G. R. Thomson writes in his Introduction to Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe, the tale has long been hailed as a masterpiece of Gothic horror; it is also a masterpiece of dramatic irony and structural symbolism. Mary Shelley's novel, though clearly influenced by the Gothic tradition, is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the omission in the novel of any scientific explanation of the monster's animation and the focus instead on the moral issues and consequences of such a creation. Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otanto.

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Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlighted Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror.There are certain themes used so that this type of fiction can achieve its meaning. In The Fall of the House of Usher the themes are the unidentifiable disease,madness and resurrection.But the author has been criticized for being too formulaic. Poe was criticized for following his own patterns established in works like Morella and Ligeia using stock characters in stock scenes and stock situations. The Fall of the House of Usher shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt. These emotions center on Roderick Usher who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, his disease causes his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac. Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a certain secrecy in Poes tale,similar to that of Mary Shelleys novel.Roderick doesnt confess he expected his sister to be alive until the end. The explicit psychological dimension of The Fall of the House of Usher has prompted many critics to analyze it as a description of the human psyche, comparing, for instance, the House to the unconscious, and its central crack to the personality split which is called dissociative identity disorder. Mental disorder is also evoked through the themes of melancholy, possible incest, and vampirism. An incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is
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not explicitly stated, but seems implied by the strange attachment between the two. If we are to regard all the things mentioned above regarding Poes tale and Frankenstein ,we could conclude that they have in common lines that bring fear (a characteristic of the Gothic fiction) ,a secret that is in silence sealed until the protagonist finds a reliable person to whom he can reveal it (Rodericks childhood companion;Captain Walton) ,the uneasiness of the characters that causes them illness (uneasiness provoked sometimes by the environment they live in),the decay that comes gradually as we advance with the reading of the texts,the tragedy that occurs to the members of the Usher and Frankenstein families (meaning their death).Frankenstein and The Fall of the House of Usher are considered by critics masterpieces of Romantic literature and have demonstrated what they are worth throughout the horror and terror that springs out of them;things achieved with the help of the imagery that introduces to us the setting,or the grotesque figures.

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