Hidden Parallels

"The sounding cataract/ Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,/ The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,/ Their colours and their forms, were then to me/ An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest/ Unborrowed from the eye." Shelley's incorporation of Romantic literature in Frankenstein has been influenced by not only her husband but Wordsworth and Coleridge who have shaped the ideas and thoughts of her literature as illustrated in their Preface--"The poet considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally a mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature." Thus Shelley's admiration of nature can be characterized through her continuous usage of the sublime and supernatural forces that steer her character's emotions and thoughts. Throughout the Romantic period, Shelley and Wordsworth both used nature as an alleviating element that rejuvenates the spirits and as a restorative factor which alleviates pains or wounds. For Wordsworth, he reminisces about Tintern Abbey after he hasn't visited for several years. His recollection is filled with beautiful imagery concerning the landscape, the cliffs, the forests. Now, however, after residing in the city, he realizes how Tintern Abbey has influenced him into his adulthood and later years even as he moves away from further and further, he still holds pieces of Tintern Abbey in his heart. During Frankenstein, a similar reverence for nature is found as Shelley uses nature to contrast with Victor and the Creation's emotions and pains after experiencing something tragic such as a death. In the context of this quote, Shelley extracts lines 77 through 84 of Wordsworth's poem, Tintern Abbey, in order to illustrate nature's role in Frankenstein as it influences both Victor and the Creation. This quote is a lamentation by Victor, expressing his grief following his best friend, Henry Cleval yet the quote serves a double purpose as it represents not only Victor's anguish but also that of his Creation. Although Shelley doesn't focus on the actual abbey which Wordsworth describes, she invokes the imagery of nature and alludes to a higher reference of God as she capitalizes on the relationship between man and nature, man and God, that both Victor and his Creation face. In the context of the quote, Victor is referring to Cleval because of his love for nature, while referencing himself likewise for the guilt and sorrow that he feels for destroying it. Moreover, the tone of the quote from Tintern Abbey depicts an ominous portrayal of nature even as it is glorified. Despite the fact that the tall, threatening natural objects Shelley uses to heighten tension, she also uses these natural elements to forebode the soon upcoming death of Cleval through Victor's perspective. Despite the common theme of nature between Shelley and Wordsworth, isolation is yet again symbolized through the hermit figure that Wordsworth writes, "Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire/ The hermit sits alone." Through this quote, one is reminded of Shelley's description of the Creation and his lonely, wandering lifestyle as well as his first encounter with fire. Representing the hermit figure in Tintern Abbey, the Creation who experiences fire during his creation also stays secluded, eschewed from the rest of society until his death--again, he is completely alone and he decides to die by incarcerating himself in flames.