GOTHIC GENRE

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

In 1816, an 18 year old Mary Shelley spent a summer with her writing Frankenstein by Mary
Shelley has been printed
friends at the Villa Diodati, by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. They set a
in many languages and
challenge, for each writer to pen a ghost story and this is where the idea guises since 1822.

for ‘Frankenstein’ came to fruition. Remember that there was a real

interest in scientific discoveries and the human body!

How does Shelley create suspense and tension in this extract?

HINTS: you will need to think about how Shelley uses words to create a sense of doom, why
not use a mind map?

suspense and tension in

Frankenstein extract

Gothic Genre 1
HINTS: You will need to use quotations from the
text to support your writing. Use the glossary to
support your understanding. Why don’t you use
some of the quotations I have selected below?

‘It was already one in the morning; the rain

pattered dismally against the panes, and my
candle was nearly burnt out,’

‘How can I describe my emotions at this

catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom
with such infinite pains and care I had formed?’

‘His yellow skin scarcely covered the muscles

and arteries beneath;’

‘but these beauties only formed a more horrid

contrast with his watery eyes,’

‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the

dream vanished, and breathless horror and
Consider how Shelley
disgust filled my heart.’ communicates the
horror to the reader.
‘Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of How does she make
us feel a sense of
the room,’ dread and
foreboding? Is there
‘I saw the dull yellow ‘I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed any pathetic fallacy
you can comment on?
eye of the creature by the wildest dreams.’
How does she
open; it breathed describe the physical
hard, and a ‘I thought that I held the corpse of creature? What scares
Dr Frankenstein the
convulsive motion my dead mother in my arms;’
most?
agitated its limbs.’
‘a cold dew covered my forehead,
my teeth chattered, and every limb
- MARY SHELLEY, ‘FRANKENSTEIN’
became convulsed:’

‘I beheld the wretch -- the miserable monster whom I had created.’

‘Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that face.’

‘Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment;’

Gothic Genre 2