The Romantic Monsters
Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge explored the natural world and attempted to reconcile it with the supernatural. In this way, each of these three Romantic writers discovered something about the world around us — as well as something within our own, personal, human nature.
With two radical parents — Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin — Mary Shelley artistically portrays a vehement tension between revolution and reform in her novel Frankenstein. Paradigmatic of Romantic Literature, Shelley harkens to her emotions, focusing deeply on love and fellowship — elements that are tangible to her, as to other romantic poets, primarily through nature. And yet, she both upholds and defies many Romantic themes and examines not only their values, but also the more fundamental question of what it means to be human. Similarly, Wordsworth and Coleridge present the nature of the individual human in light of deep relationships and the violent storms of life.
Climbing out of the 17th and 18th centuries of rationalism into a romantic era, many poets moved away from reason toward the emotional faculties. For Wordsworth, “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and even Coleridge, in his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” explodes with emotion (Wordsworth 306). The ability to feel, in contrast with reason, defines the Romantic characteristics of man and are demonstrated as guides to moral conduct. In the Rime, the Mariner is led on by a “woful agony” that forces him to begin his tale — guided by an overpowering emotion that leads him to make moral judgements and “relieve” him (Coleridge 463).
An unusual, yet mesmeric tale, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” concerns a Mariner who shoots (and kills) an Albatross, which propels him into regret and punishment as well as estrangement from his fellow humans. The poem is heard by the wedding-guest, through whom the reader understands the story, and told through the mouth of the Mariner. Upon spying the “man that must hear” him, the Mariner is ensnared by a “woful agony” that forces him to begin his narrative (lines 589 and 579). The sudden agitation to speak, thus also the fact that the narrative is told by the Mariner himself, provides an honesty to the story that the narrative would not otherwise possess. When the wild-eyed Mariner arrives and begins, the first-person perspective along with the sorrowful and regretful tone present throughout, the Mariner displays honesty which makes his story (to a certain degree) very believable. However regretful, the mood proves also eerie and rather mysterious, for the entire narrative is flooded with the wild and unknown. The Mariner, suddenly appearing at the wedding, holds the wedding-guest captive with his “glittering eye” and begins his strange tale (line 13). Both the outlandish events described and the tone of the story add to the eerie atmosphere. Ice “as green as emerald” floats by, the mysterious Albatross arrives, and “slimy things” crawl at the hull (lines 54 and 125). Death and Life-in-Death arrive to kill the seamen and curse the Mariner. The simple rhyme (ABCB) directs the focus from the poetic form of the piece and unto the content within the narrative. Through utilizing violent and supernatural imagery — such as the souls of the seamen, the blood to slake their throats, “fog-smoke white” nights — the scenes of the story assume a dark and eerie feel (line 77).
Both the tone and the emotions within the poem undergo a significant alteration. After the Mariner has shot the Albatross and has witnessed the death of his crew, he tries to pray, but finds himself unable and his “heart as dry as dust” (line 247). Up until this point within the narrative, the tone remains eerie and mysterious; yet when he peers into the water and marks the slimy creatures, the “water-snakes,” he is suddenly overcome by a sensation of love and wonder (line 273). He describes their beauty through color and their coiling movement and then proceeds to bless “them unaware,” at which he finds the Albatross slipping from his neck and regains the power to pray (lines 285–291). The wonder and astonishment produced by nature connects the Mariner with the divine. Coleridge, like Wordsworth, reveals that loving and marveling at the natural world leads the individual to a wiser and purer form than the mature self, which ultimately leads on to the divine. He “who loveth well both man and bird and beast” also prays well, but rejecting nature removes one from the divine — only when the Mariner realizes with wonder what he saw, was he able to pray (lines 612–613). Here the narrative shifts from dark and eerie to portraying hope; the Mariner is not set free from his punishment upon praying, but the Mariner does change his view on the world and the experiences he had, which is a powerful reminder to reflect on nature, with strong emotions (as Wordsworth argued was the aim and intent of poetry) not only for Coleridge and his contemporaries, but also for us in our modern and, in some ways, more unnatural world.
The main image of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the Albatross, which begins as a symbol of good omens and luck, bringing fair winds and fine voyage with it. Yet the Albatross later transforms into a symbol of anguish and regret after the Mariner kills the innocent bird and is forced to wear it around his neck. And when the Mariner’s throat is unslaked, but he wishes to cry out, he bites into his arm and sucks the blood. Here, the Mariner is forced to shed his own blood, just as Judas killed himself after the death of the Christ. In fact, through a religious lense, the Albatross represents Christ, for it dies by the machinations of a crossbow, used by the Mariner who thus likens Judas Iscariot that, “instead of the cross,” must carry the dead Albatross. On another side of the spectrum of criticism, one may read the “Rime” through a psychoanalytic lens. Freud revolutionized psychology with his conception of the unconscious, “dual” mind, the id and the ego (the superego being a mere projection of the ego). Coleridge’s life is filled with possibilities and yet also despair, a contrast starkly reflected in the Mariner’s own life at sea. From fair winds and the view of possibilities set before him, the Mariner continues to fall into a pit of misery and anguish, just as Coleridge’s life turns into something quite bitter. With no degree, a failed scheme of a “pantisocracy,” a miserable marriage, and an addiction to opium, Coleridge translates his life into the life of a seaman who shoots the Albatross without clear intent and thus is forced to realize his shame and live on with his guilt, unable to do else than tell his tale. Perhaps an early Marxist, Coleridge reflects Wordsworth’s view on Nature, but fashions each of the characters within the story at a (somewhat) equal level. The priest is on the same boat as a fisherman and, although the Mariner is a seafarer above a mere fisher, they are all brought together and none, save the Albatross, is better (or worse, for that matter) than the other. First written only four years after, perhaps Coleridge’s failed “pantisocracy” manifested itself in “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and produced a duality found not only in nature, but in Coleridge, and therefore in us, the readers, as well. It is the responsibility of each individual to reconcile the natural and the unnatural within, and without, ourselves.
Likewise, Victor Frankenstein seeks to reconcile the natural with the unnatural in Shelley’s Frankenstein. Victor is overcome by a creative desire as he fashions the creature in preparation to endow it with life. He had “desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation” and allowed his vision and feelings to guide his actions (Shelley 60). Infatuated with his project, Victor suddenly experienced the horror of what he had intricately and meticulously created, and then hunted the creature to its death.
Victor suddenly shoots his Albatross and turns his back on his creation in a moment of horror and disgust. Yet the Albatross is hung around his neck, and Victor must carry the weight of having created a monster. Walton is Victor’s wedding guest — forced to listen to Victor’s fated tale. Unlike the wedding guest, however, Walton is no “wiser man,” but proves only an extension of Victor’s disgust. Walton despairs, but only because his own expedition failed before the crew attempted the hardships closer to the North Pole, yet he learns nothing from Victor’s narrative and drives the creature out as though the creature is the monster. But the creature is not the monster, for Walton assumes that role. He retains the luxury of noticing both Victor and the creature unfold and learns of their nature without prior experience with either, yet chooses to ignore the overt injustice presented to him and see the creature only in the light of its physical appearance. No one else within the narrative comes to learn of the monster’s thoughts and emotions as deeply as Walton, but he alone chooses to ignore the humanity of the monster and gaze only on its exterior appearance. The wedding guest, in the Rime, at first thinks the Mariner a sort of “monster,” envisioning him as a strange and inhuman figure that he fears (Coleridge 454, line 224). Yet the wedding guest, likened to Walton yet so much unlike him, ends the tale stunned and noticeably changed. Both the supernatural and the natural components of the story impacted the guest, as the natural and supernatural parts of Victor’s narrative impacted (but did not change) Robert Walton.
Wordsworth’s poetry is primarily concerned with a return to, along with the individual within nature. Interwoven throughout these three poems — “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” and “My Heart Leaps Up,” — is a melancholic tone that can only be relieved by the physical, natural world. Wordsworth finds himself outside reflecting, but perceives how “much it grieved [his] heart to think / What man has made of man” (lines 7–8). As he looks about himself, however, birds hop and play, and he finds “that there was pleasure there” in the trees and the “breezy air” (line 20; line 18). When wandering in solitude just like a cloud, Wordsworth spies a field of daffodils and finds that his “heart with pleasure fills” (line 23). And likewise in the last poem of the three, his “heart leaps up when [he] beholds a rainbow in the sky” (lines 1–2). This melancholic mood follows the Romantic poet as he explores, in solitude, the sublimity of simple nature. For in these three poems, he writes of neither terrible disasters nor unbelievable wonders, but of birds, trees, daffodils, and rainbows. Not only does nature gift joy, but it is also more pure and wise than man. For the “Child is father of the man” and the thoughts of the birds the speaker “cannot measure” (line 7; line 14). Through solitude within the natural world is found joy in simplicity, wisdom in lightheartedness, and maturity in youth.
Some general notes on structure and language. All three poems are penned in iambic tetrameter, giving a graceful and lyric feeling to the poems. The rhyme scheme remains relatively simple: ABAB, ABABCC, ABCCABCDD, respectively, with mainly liquid consonants; in fact, the only plosive consonants across all three poems that are not separated by softer sounds scattered in between is one single line in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud:” “A poet could not but be gay” (line 15). Even here, the consonants meticulously chosen by Wordsworth utilize the soft “b” rather than harsher “p” or “t” sounds. Both the melancholic tone and the simple nature Wordsworth describes is brought to the surface by the language and the smooth sounds employed.
The powerful element of Nature aims to reconcile Wordsworth’s vision penned in his reflections in “Tintern Abbey.” While the setting in “Tintern Abbey” is natural, the speaker, Wordsworth, observes his surroundings in solitude. Contrary to Wordsworth, the creature finds no solace in solitude; this is due, in part, by the fact that the creature’s solitude is much closer to forced isolation rather than Wordsworth’s choice of remaining alone. However different, the creature is yet projected upon a similar path as Wordsworth: as they both move from youth to maturity they distance themselves from sensory perception to reflection. Wordsworth notices the aesthetic sublimity of Tintern Abbey in the beginning, but after revisiting the place, he dives inward to gain insight into himself. So does the creature move from pure sensory perception of the environment around him to learning language from De Lacey, Felix, and Agatha and becoming a creature of reason and sensibility. Both characters have learned of the power of reflection and “to look on Nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity” (Wordsworth 301). In both instances, to varying degrees, it is Nature that impels them onward, and acts as a “motion and a spirit” for them. After Victor deserts his creation and fulfils not his parental duties, the creature is left to the devices of the natural world, from which it learns about the reality around it. Wordsworth affirms Edward Young’s expression that the human senses “half create the wondrous world they see,” which Victor magnificently expresses as well: he envisions himself as a “blasted tree” where the “bolt has entered [his] soul” — yet the bolt is of his own mind and his “blastedness” is likewise a fault of his own (Young 301; Shelley 140). The creature and its horrifying elements were wrought about by him, whereas its natural development was not, but (more importantly) Victor’s response to the creature’s very essence was his own fabrication which thrust him into a world he half created.
Only on one point do Shelley and Wordsworth disagree: upon the question of who, in fact, is Nature’s Priest. Wordsworth believes that those “best portion[s] of a good man’s life,” i.e. a person’s youth, is Nature’s Priest (Wordsworth 300). He explicitly declares in his “Intimations of Immortality,” and alludes to in the Prelude to the Lyrical Ballads as well, that Nature is the divine that each individual should seek, and youth, as Nature’s Priest (what mediates between the individual and Nature) is reflection (Wordsworth 349 and 305). Yet Shelley rejects the notion of youth as Nature’s Priest and subscribes instead to the idea of love and relation as the connection to the divine. Although Victor often finds himself thrust into Nature to recover from his deteriorating mind, it is when he enters into relationships that he becomes most healthy. It was Clerval who “called forth the better feelings of [Victor’s] heart; he again taught [Victor] to love the aspect of Nature” (Shelley 70). In effect, Clerval acted as the mediary between Victor and the divinity of Nature, which for Wordsworth was the responsibility of his reflections on youth. The creature too is stripped from its humanity when it is rejected by society at large, and thus begins to murder — only when the creature finds relation with De Lacey is it calm and enjoying its life. It sought those “feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed,” but turned into a “murderer” only after it was refused this relation (187).
The creature is arguably more human than any other character in Shelley’s Romantic novel, Frankenstein. Both its humanity and ardent desire for acceptance and relationship propels this heartfelt narrative into the horror genre, questioning what humanity has become and what it will turn into if we reject reason and love and replace it with unreflecting (and unrelenting) emotion. Even more fundamental than the question of what it means to be human, Shelley seems to be asking the readers whether we are ever truly in companionship with others. For the creature declares that “even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation,” which conjures up the image of Satan with his host of snakes that, in the end, reject him, rendering him alone as the creature is alone, as Victor Frankenstein dies alone, and as Robert Walton is forsaken by his crew and finds himself returning to England — alone (187). If the most human character in the novel declares its solitude, how can we as readers, less human than Victor’s monstrous creation, ever hope to find intimacy in fellowship?
Works Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Romantic Period). Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., D, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2018.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism). Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015.
Wordsworth, William. “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Romantic Period). Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., D, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2018.
Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written in Early Spring.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Romantic Period). Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., D, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2018.
Wordsworth, William. “My Heart Leaps Up.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Romantic Period). Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., D, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2018.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Romantic Period). Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., D, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2018.
Young, Edward. Night Thoughts. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
