‘for Me, the Story Is Less a Horror…Than a Larger Than Life Gothic Fairytale’ (Kenneth Brannagh) How Far and in What Ways Do You Agree with This Description of the Text?
‘For me, the story is less a horror…than a larger than life gothic fairytale’ (Kenneth Brannagh) How far and in what ways do you agree with this description of the text?
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel which forces the reader to question whether it is a simple horror story or whether it is a gothic fairytale of many depths. Frankenstein is considered by many critics as the first modern horror story ever written, and it opened a whole new world of ideas for novels and has inspired many similar works since its publication in 1818. As we see by the prelude, Shelley’s first ambition is to horrify the reader as she describes wanting to ‘awaken thrilling horror - one to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood and quicken the heartbeat.’ This she evidently accomplishes through imagery and intense language, yet during the novel, many other themes are introduced, especially in confronting the problems within society during the 19th century, such as the position of women, and the problems of the legal system, and so it is through the exploration of these other key themes which, for many readers, makes Frankenstein a tale of so much more than a horror. Although Shelley originally wrote her novel as part of a ‘ghost story’ competition amongst friends, it is more complex and deals with greater issues than those of a fictional ghost story. While Frankenstein creates the path for Dracula and other great Gothic novels with the ability to thrill whilst exciting disgust and horror, it also shows much more realistic horrors, which set the path of true terror.
For obvious reasons, Frankenstein is interpreted as a classic horror novel, as the form of the book is a Gothic novel. The horror aspect is particularly seen through the creation of the monster, where we are told of the origin of his body parts and Shelley describes ‘His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath’. For many readers today, the tale of Frankenstein is not
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel which forces the reader to question whether it is a simple horror story or whether it is a gothic fairytale of many depths. Frankenstein is considered by many critics as the first modern horror story ever written, and it opened a whole new world of ideas for novels and has inspired many similar works since its publication in 1818. As we see by the prelude, Shelley’s first ambition is to horrify the reader as she describes wanting to ‘awaken thrilling horror - one to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood and quicken the heartbeat.’ This she evidently accomplishes through imagery and intense language, yet during the novel, many other themes are introduced, especially in confronting the problems within society during the 19th century, such as the position of women, and the problems of the legal system, and so it is through the exploration of these other key themes which, for many readers, makes Frankenstein a tale of so much more than a horror. Although Shelley originally wrote her novel as part of a ‘ghost story’ competition amongst friends, it is more complex and deals with greater issues than those of a fictional ghost story. While Frankenstein creates the path for Dracula and other great Gothic novels with the ability to thrill whilst exciting disgust and horror, it also shows much more realistic horrors, which set the path of true terror.
For obvious reasons, Frankenstein is interpreted as a classic horror novel, as the form of the book is a Gothic novel. The horror aspect is particularly seen through the creation of the monster, where we are told of the origin of his body parts and Shelley describes ‘His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath’. For many readers today, the tale of Frankenstein is not