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Explore the Effect of Shelley's Authorial Craft on the Reader in Chapter Five and Chapter Eleven of Frankenstein. How Successfully Does She Create Empathy With the Narrator? The tale of Frankenstein could be said to be one of the most shocking, paranormal and famous novels of all time. Twisted with terror, aspiration, horror and catastrophe, 'Frankenstein' is a favourite for English Literature studies, and has also been produced as a successful cinema horror movie. The book was written by Mary Shelley, whose life was so complicated and troubled; a whole novel could be based upon her alone!
Shelley's story was a sad one.
Her mother died only ten days after giving birth to Shelley, and she found only herself to blame. The path leading to the writing of Frankenstein was littered with deaths, misery, affairs and pregnancy. Although brought up to believe that all should be loved and cherished, love was the thing Shelley longed for most. Her marriage to Percy Shelley was unsteady, swamped by having to cope with the deaths of their children.
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Percy left Mary, while she was pregnant for the fifth time, abandoning her, leaving her distraught and alone.
All Shelley's experiences in earlier life would eventually build up a foundation that would lead her to write the book of Frankenstein. In the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley stayed in a villa in Switzerland with a number of friends. One night, their discussion fell upon an issue that many scientists were researching into at the time- whether the dead could be brought back to life using electricity.
The following night, Shelley had a nightmare. She describes her dream to her companions- 'I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life... ' In the dream, Shelley watched a scientist 'make' a gruesome new being using a machine. When she woke the next morning, she immediately realised she had a story capable of shocking and entertaining all who would read it. The book of 'Frankenstein' does exactly this. Overshadowed by views on sexism at the time, Mary Shelley wrote the book in secrecy, putting her name to it thirteen years after it was published.
She lived in an age where women were considered to be of a lower status than men; didn't have major careers and were often expected to stay at home to look after the family. Books in the 19th century would probably only have been published if written by a male author. Driven by the knowledge that she had a tale able of enthralling her audiences, Shelley put her husband's name to the book, not wanting to take the risk of her book being rejected by publishers. Fooled by this, the publishers produced 500 copies, and the spark of 'Frankenstein' was finally lit.
The book swept the country and eventually the world; was performed to audiences in theatres and has now been produced as a movie, winning a number of awards. The focus of this essay is to explore the effect of Shelley's Authorial Craft on the reader, based on Chapter Five and Eleven. I will deeply analyze the techniques that she has used, and there effect on the audience. I will also look at how successful Shelley is at creating empathy with the audience. In the original version by Mary Shelley, the language is not Old English, yet it is not modern English either.
Instead, some of the language is archaic, as various words in the book would not be used in the modern day. It is of importance to note that at the time, the language of the book would have been used widely, yet for an audience today, the language often appears more complex, and at times can be difficult to understand. Shelley has a tendency to use complicated words and a wide range of vocabulary to describe her characters feelings and emotions, yet enables the reader to understand their point of view, making them have a more powerful impact on the reader.
In her novel, Shelley creates the character of Victor Frankenstein- a Swedish Science university student. In the story, he becomes obsessed, infatuated by creating his own human and by being the man to first break the borders between life and death. It was finally on a 'dreary night of November', after two years of hard graft, desire, and depriving himself of 'rest and health', that Frankenstein's monster was complete. Fusing life into the motionless body, Frankenstein steps back, watching the 'dull yellow eye of the creature open', and suddenly becomes stricken with horror and shock.
Regretting immediately what he has done, Frankenstein flees, leaving the new creature vulnerable and alone. The being, no different than a new-born baby, is left to fend for itself, to discover itself and its senses, and is soon rejected, abused, and unloved by the world. In Chapter Five, Shelley writes of the moment Frankenstein breaks the walls of death, and infuses life into his creation. This chapter, without a doubt, is the most important chapter of the book, and is the chapter the audience has been waiting for.
Shelley has deliberately made the first four chapters slow-paced, slowly building up tension, and now, Victor Frankenstein's creation is finally complete. In this chapter, dreams spring to life, and Frankenstein's theories become an appalling reality, setting off a chain of events that would affect both Frankenstein's and the creature's lives forever. The rest of the novel depends solely on the happenings of this chapter. Chapter Five dawns with a dark and ghostly scene. Rain patters 'dismally at the panes'. The 'half-extinguished' candle in the corner casts a dim, flickering light, causing shadows to dance ghost-like upon the walls.
The descriptions of the time of year, time of day, and of the weather all build up a picture typical to that of a gothic-horror. It is 'one in the morning', on a rainy, stormy night in early winter, when Frankenstein gathers his tools, or his 'instruments of life', by which he would 'infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing' that lay at his feet. The genre 'Gothic' refers to a style of writing that contains supernatural, unexplained and peculiar events, with the purpose of creating terror or horror in the reader- and how Chapter Five fits to this!
What could be more supernatural and peculiar than giving breath to a limp, lifeless creature using electricity? There is a wide range of gothic horror novels, including 'The Castle of Otranto' by Horace Walpole, in which detailed language describes the eerie and chilling events. 'The Castle of Otranto' and 'Frankenstein', when compared, both use specific techniques which create the Gothic genre, building both tension and atmosphere. In the first few sentences alone, Shelley has already used a number of techniques, which all prove to be very effective on the reader.
By describing the rainy, unsettled weather when setting the scene, she uses a technique called pathetic fallacy. The weather of a scene can have a great affect on the mood of that scene. A sunny, dry day creates a happy, joyous atmosphere, whereas in this case, the dark, rainy night reflects a dreary and somewhat spooky aura. A possible storm is looming, and gives the audience a suspicion that something bad is about to happen and raises tension- a technique called foreboding. This makes the reader want to read on and to find out whether their suspicions of something dreadful happening are indeed correct.
The last sentence of the opening paragraph also builds up tension in the reader. 'It was already one in the morning; the pain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. ' Being a complex sentence, it has a number of clauses, which create natural pauses when being read, or when read aloud. In just one sentence, Shelley has given much detail about the monster.
The first clause sets the scene- 'It was already one in the morning'- before moving on to describe when the eye of the once-lifeless creature opens. The sentence suggests of the creature's power, even when new-born- 'it breathed hard'- and portrays how it 'jerks' to life- 'a convulsive motion agitated its limbs'. Being slow-paced, the sentence builds up tension slowly, and therefore is dramatic when the creature finally opens its eye. There are other complex sentences found in this chapter. They are used not only to build tension, but to make the text appear like a flow of Frankenstein's feelings, and are like streams of consciousness.
Frankenstein's feelings. (2020, Jun 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/frankensteins-feelings-8586-new-essay
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