Comparing Frankenstein And Work Without Hope By Percy Shelley

Natural Problems with Natural Solutions Each day, there are countless issues of all ranges from the spectrum with which every individual deals. These problems throw individuals in a pit of darkness of sorrow, grief and solitude with only a flame of hope for happiness and joy. Different individuals will grab different means to add oil to this flame so ultimately at the end, light will outcompete dark and happiness will once again fill the life of an individual. A typical nineteenth century man deals with evolving social classes and the Industrial Revolution, bringing about problems of slave labor, social inequality and poor living and working conditions for the lower class. Through industrialization and urbanization, this Revolution installs a new modern society to which many people are not accustomed and many depend on nature, religion, family and friends as a means to find peace and stability from this ever changing society. In her Romantic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes the solutions to Victor Frankenstein’s problems of hardship by seeking nature and family, a theme also seen in various Romantic poems of Samuel Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth and John Keats. Just like the Romantic period became a time when many lower class people remained poor and unimproved, “Work Without Hope” by Samuel Coleridge and “A Lament” by Percy Shelley both emphasize the hopeless attitude of a typical nineteenth century man, relating to Victor Frankenstein’s own pessimistic approach to his life. Coleridge describes in “Work Without Hope” a man locked in a state of “winter” and dormancy, lacking productivity and
They elevated me from all littleness of feeling and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquilized it…they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. (M. Shelley