I have
to admit, after the first reading of "Tintern Abbey,"I couldn't for
the life of me connect it to Frankenstein in any way. The calmness, the
effervescence and warmth and bittersweet memories that come from "Tintern
Abbey" don't mesh well with the horror, science fiction, and aestheticism
of Frankenstein. And then I realized, it wasn't about comparing the two
ideas; in fact, they complemented each other fairly well in their differences,
not their similarities. It's the contrast that makes "Tintern
Abbey" fit so well within the terrifying ideas that Shelley proposes in
her novel.
In fact, on page 139-140, Shelley cites a
certain passage from the poem to describe Victor's closest friend, Henry
Clerval. The section in particular seemed to just describe Clerval's love of
literature and nature in general, expressed through his passion for the natural aura around him
and that gives him such delight. This contrasts with Frankenstein's background
in the rigid natural sciences, the mechanical creation of nature that doesn't
provide him these similar pleasures. In essence, these two works of
fiction (Frankenstein and “Tintern
Abbey”) are doubles, just in the way that Victor and Henry are doubles; each
has what the other doesn't. Victor has the bookish knowledge, the memorized rules and laws of nature, while Henry possesses the internal salvation, the "aching joy" and profoundness that nature offers.
When I
read this portion of Frankenstein again,
the impact of nature in Victor’s life and the whole work becomes more apparent;
the connotations of nature now include what Wordsworth described as “Nature” in
his poetic ramblings, which range from "anchor" to "savior" to "guardian." Shelley put “Tintern Abbey” in her own work to display
nature’s workings on man, such as the feeling of joy, tranquility, and other
pleasurable sensations in a way that a mechanical recreation of nature never could. In addition to Victor’s
overreaching personality, his unnatural conception of his creature--which should have been the epitome of human discovery, the recreation of nature in man's hands, not God's-- doesn’t give
him this type of solace that Henry Clerval is able to achieve through his
travels in the European countryside, enjoying nature for what it has to offer.
These two contrasts of 'fake' nature and 'real' nature occur throughout the book, in each character's past, present and future. Kind of similar, again, to the structure of "Tintern Abbey" itself...the layout of time frames and the effect of nature from the mind of a boy to the mind of man.
Just
think about the poem that Wordsworth uses to describe nature; his words, his
lines, and his poetic laments of nature could have just as easily been placed in Victor’s mouth
and we wouldn’t know the difference! Victor's situation only digresses in that nature, in the form of the creature he created, doesn’t share the same
awe-inspiring, eye-opening effects that real nature gives. But other than that, is there not a distinct past, present, and
future that Victor goes through in the book? It starts with his past misunderstanding
and crude interpretation of nature through Agrippa’s works; the present insight—unfortunate,
but still, insight—of the power and dangers of nature, regardless of superficial formation; and the future of passing down what he learned to a youth (Walton, in this case) about he mysteries of nature, in the form of warning and reverence for this
power. In addition to creating a convoluted allusion of the Creation story and
Prometheus, Shelley does the same with “Tintern Abbey” in her novel, which in the beginning, was a whole lot to process for just one book.
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