article about literature 9

The romantic beast among non romantic beauties

Written by Administrator

Sep 07, 2008 at 02:00 PM

What do we mean exactly when we call some one or some thing romantic? The term is notoriously difficult to be defined and even got more complex by the amount of recent critical attempts. What makes this to be such complicated are those different fields, movements and genres in which the term has been emerged. Romantic spirit of politics seems to be synonymous with nationalism while romanticism in literature challenges a sense of national identity and nation hood [1]. Accordingly one may come to the point that Lovejoy was right to say “the word, romantic, has come to mean so many things that by itself it means nothing” [2]. Consequently it would be excused if we specify the term just in case. Hereby as we are dealing with the genre of novel we need to trace “romantic codes” in the works of some early novelists who are said to be among the fore runners of writing romantic novels or fictions including: Samuel Richardson, Horace Walpole and Mrs. Radcliff. These writers fed a taste for gothic tales of dark castles, midnight escapes and shining heroism, all given a somewhat sensational medieval setting. Mrs. Radcliff adds other romantic notes: nature and beauty [3] which are more suitably useable in our case. Considering the work of Shelly, one can find her beast to be born in the world not just strongly attracted to its beauty and transparently avid of nature but almost hopelessly impaled on them. In the time Shelly wrote Frankenstein, Lock’s idea that people were not born with innate ideas was a common belief. Lock imagined people as a kind of blank canvas or “tabula rasa” accordingly the monster in Frankenstein is portrayed in this way, as his most early impressions of the world surrounding and its inhabitants are combined with a kind of openness and innocence but soon he finds other people not charming and welcome but some sorts of beautiful beasts ( or it is better to say not too much ugly as he was) so he leaves the city and hides him self in the woods seeking the natural beauty of the world as a meaning for his life. By cogitating about former fictional and mythical characters and meditating about his needs, he thirsts for love and having a mate. But because he is detached from his origins, the beauty he loves should be some thing detached as well. He is not interested in other people as other people are not interested in him so he asks Victor Frankenstein to give him a mate from his own origin. This instinctual request leads the narration to its crisis point. Those former fictional characters we foresaid, all had their romantic and amorous moments in which they could laugh with or cry for their loveable mates. Perhaps if our monster had cried, for just one moment, in a monstrous feminine bosom, he would have also believed to be a wretched one not the most wretched. Perhaps this is the scene that is flashing in the creature’s mind and makes his thirst more intense, makes him jealous of life time of being in love. [4] The world surrounding deprives him of the love he seeks and this “not reaching” the love is what he writes on his “tabula rasa” by the hands of other people. This might seem to be so deterministic but quite contrary to this notion, one can find the beast a newly born creature with free will to choose, knowing that also he did not choose the form of his life but he could choose its theme. We titled this essay “the romantic beast among non romantic beauties” but as we know that romanticism is ruled by the laws of nature we can find the beast to be the non romantic one. Because he belongs to the realm of corpses and not living people, by insisting to live and love, he is the one who violates the regulations designed by nature. Perhaps it is not a wrong interpretation that corpses should stay dead…