Romanticism In Frankenstein

As the production level in European industries increased the working conditions for the poor decreased. "Since the beginning of industrialization, large numbers of women and children worked in factories. Mill owners could pay these workers less than they did adult men, and they were easier to manage" (Burgan 35). The wealthy factory owners capitalized on women and children by giving them significantly less wages than those given to men as well as overworked them to a level of near death. The working conditions served as inklings of the capitalist mindsets, [Referring to factory owners], “They saw that the people with little skill could be trained to run machines, and industrialists didn't have to pay them much for the work" (Burgan 33) Another
Specifically, “The European nations, through Romanticism, affirmed their own historic and cultural individuality against the leveling forces of revolutionary and Napoleonic France" (Poggio 26). Romanticism was a period of art that expressed the disdain for the industrial revolution. Not only was it disrupting nature it was disrupting a peaceful life. "Mary Shelley explored in Frankenstein the danger involved when science oversteps the boundaries of human potential" (Poggio 28). The backlash of the industrial revolution was present in the arts as well as the economy and work force. During the industrial era, "Here were all the elements of a mortal struggle. And so we see on one side strikes, outbursts of violence, agitations, now for a minimum wage, now for the right to combine, attempts, sometimes ambitions and far-sighted, to co-operate for mutual aid and mutual education, that pursuit from time to time of other projects for the reform of Parliament" (Stalcup 140). The lower classes broke from their sleepy oblivion eventually and advocated for their working rights. Though it took many years to obtain a change in working conditions, the perspective of the wealthy was no longer and inevitable power class but was now seen as a dirty and inhumane class driven by a competition and greed. There was a fire that drove the working class unlike the during the “…early stages of industrialization, felt that ills such as poverty and social inequality were natural and inevitable facets of large-scale industry and life in general" (Nardo 35). Workers voiced their concerns for the first time, and finally had something other than oppression to look for. At that point free capitalism was seen in a negative light and was loosing popularity, rather a modified capitalism that gives equal chance in the work place and improvements in