Cultural studies and features of cultural studies.

Topic: What is Cultural Studies?  Which are the features of Cultural Studies?

Name: Baraiya Sonal Rameshbhai.

Class: M.A.Sem-2.

Subject: Paper No.: 8- The Cultural Studies

Guide: Dilip Barad.

Submitted To: Smt. S.B. Gardi,

                                Department of English,

                                M.K.Bhavnagar University.

Introduction:

       When we discussed about Cultural Studies first we discussed about the word ‘‘Culture’’. ‘Culture’ has meant before that ‘Culture’ derives from ‘cultura’ and ‘colere’, meaning ‘to cultivate’. It also meant ‘to honour’ and ‘protect’. By the nineteenth century in Europe it meant the habits, customs and tastes of the upper classes. At the present time it is define in Cultural Studies as ‘Culture’ is the mode of generating meanings and ideas. This ‘mode’ is a negotiation over which meanings are valid. Meanings are governed by power relations. Elite culture controls meanings because it control the terms of the debate. Non-elite views on life and art are rejected as ‘tastless’, ‘useless’ or even stupid by the elite. What this implies is that certain components of culture get more visibility and significance. Through this we can say that we can’t reach at ultimate definition of culture.

What is Cultural Studies?

          The word ‘‘culture’’ itself is so difficult to pin down, cultural studies’’ is hard to define. As was also the case in chapter 8 with Elaine Showalter’s ‘‘cultural’’ model of feminine difference, ‘‘cultural studies’’ is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out, cultural studies is not ‘‘a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda,’’ but a ‘‘loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions’’. Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies: those fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. For example, drawing from Roland Barthes on the nature of the literary language and Claude Levi-Strauss on anthropology, cultural studies was influenced by structuralism and poststructuralism. Jacques Derrida’s ‘‘deconstruction’’ of the world/ text distinction, like all his deconstructions of hierarchical oppositions, has urged- or enabled- cultural critics ‘‘to erase the boundaries between high and low culture, classic and popular literary texts, and literature and other cultural discourses that, following Derrida, may be seen as menifestations of the same textulity.’’

        The discipline of psychology has also entered the field of cultural studies. For example, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious structured as a language promoted emphasis upon language and power as symbolic systems. From Michel Foucault came the notion that power is a whole complex of forces; it is that which produces what happens. A tyrannical aristocrat does not just independently wield power but is empowered by ‘‘discourses’’- accepted ways of thinking, writing, and speaking- and practices that embody, exercise, and amount to power. From punishment to sexual mores, Foucault’s ‘‘genealogy’’ of topics includes many things excluded by traditional historians, from architectural blueprints for prisons to memoirs of ‘‘deviants.’’ Psychoanalytic, structuralist, and poststructuralist approaches are treated elsewhere in this Handbook; in the present chapter, we review cultural studies’ connections with Marxism, the new historicism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, popular culture, and postcolonial studies.                                                                         

     

Features of Cultural Studies:

(1)            Power Relation and its influence and shape on cultural practices:

            In several instance earlier in this chapter we noted the cultural and new historical emphases on power relationships. For example, we noted that cultural critics assume ‘‘oppositional’’ roles in terms of power structures, wherever they might be found. Veeser, we pointed out, credited the new historicists with dealing with, ‘‘questions of politics, power, indeed on all matters that deeply affected people’s practical lives’’. And of course there are the large emphases on power in the matter of Jonathan Swift’s Laputa, as previously noted.

              Let us now approach Shakespeare’s ‘‘HAMLET’’ with a view to seeing power in its cultural context.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, these two characters that we study under the approach of cultural studies. After the play within the play, Claudius is talking privately with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s fellow students from Wittenberg. In response to Claudius’s plan to send Hamlet to England, Rosencrantz delivers a speech that-if read out of context-is both an excellent set of metaphors and a summation of the Elizabethan concept of the role and power of Kingship:

              The singular and peculiar life is bound

              With all the strength and armor of the mind

              To keep itself from noyance, but much more

              That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests

              The lives of many. The cease of majesty

              Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

              What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel

              Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,

              To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

              Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls,

              Each small annexment, petty consequence,

              Attends the boisterious ruin. Never alone

              Did the king sigh but with a general groan.

Taken alone, the passage is a thoughtful and imagistically successful passage, worthy of a wise and accomplished statement.

         But how many readers and viewers of the play would rank this passage among the best-known lines of the play-with Hamlet’s soliloquies, for instance, or with the king’s effort to pray, or even with the aphorisms addressed by Polonius to his son Laertes? We venture to say that the passage, intrinsically good if one looks at it alone, is simply not well known.

  Why?

    Attention to the context and to the speaker gives the answer. Guildenstern had just agreed that he and Rosencrantz would do the king’s bidding. The agreement is only a reaffirmation of what they had told the king when he first received them at court. Both speeches are wholly in character, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are among the jellyfish of Shakespeare’s characters. Easy it is to forget which of the two speaks which lines-indeed easy it is to forget most of their lines altogether. The two are distinctly plot-driven:

     Empty of personality, sycophantic in a sniveling way, eager to curry favor with power even if it means spying on their erstwhile friend. Weakly they admit, without much skill at denial, that they ‘‘were sent for’’. Even less successfully they try to play on Hamlet’s metaphorical ‘‘pipe,’’ to know his ‘‘stops,’’ when they are forced to admit that they could not even handle the literal musical instruments that Hamlet shows them. Still later these nonentities meet their destined ‘‘non-beingness,’’ as it were, when Hamlet, who can play the pipe so much more efficiently, substitutes their names in the death warrant intended for him.

             If ever we wished to study two characters who are marginalized, then let us look upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

    The meanings of their names hardly match what seems to be the essence of their characters. Murray J. Levith, for example, has written that ‘‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are from the Dutch-German: Literally, ‘garland of roses’ and ‘golden star.’ Although of religious origin, both names together sound singsong and odd to English ears. Their jingling gives them lightness, and blurs the individuality of the characters they label’’.

       Lightness to be sure. Harley Granville-Barker once wrote in an offhand way of the reaction these two roles call up for actors. Commenting on Solanio and Salarino from ‘‘The Merchant of Venice’’, he noted that their roles are ‘‘cursed by actors as the worst bores in the whole Shakespearean canon; not excepting, even those other twin brethren in nonentity, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’’.

       Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they are pawns for Claudius first, for Hamlet second. Because they know that the power on the hand of Claudius and their more constant motive is to please the king, the power that has brought them here. Their fate, however, is to displease mightily the prince, who will undermine them and ‘‘hoist with own petard.’’ Claudius was aware of power, clearly, when he observed of Hamlet’s apparent madness that ‘‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go’’. With equal truth Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might have observed that power in great ones also must not unwatched go.

      In short, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are no more than what Rosencrantz called a ‘‘small annexment,’’ a ‘‘petty consequence,’’ mere nothings for the ‘‘massy wheel’’ of kings. Through this we can conclude that that type of characters have same speech as hero has though they have not much attention as hero has. We seemed in various movies that supporting characters sometimes gave the idea that how to meet hero to heroine and then hero take action on that. Sometimes what happen that supporting characters are more important than hero.  For Example- In the novel Tughlaq by Girish karnad. No doubt that it is historical play but in which Girish Karnad presented same thing.  With the approach of the cultural studies we seemed in this novel that both characters Aziz and Aazam are marginalized but they both are having more commonsense than the king Tughlaq has. For example – When Tughlaq passed the rule that all coins are translated into copper that time that both characters know that when we translated coins into copper, every one made this coins and there is no any comparison and hierarchy between any of them that is why they both of them collected all silver coins with the thinking of that that when good king came and changed this nonsense rule that time these all coins help him to became rich. Not only in this matter but there are various matter that is proved that that both characters are very intelligent than hero rather the king.

(2)            Cultural studies is not simply the study of cultural as though it was a discrete entity divorced from its social or political context. Its objective is to understand culture in all its complex forms and to analyze the social and political context within which it manifests itself.

(3)             Culture in cultural studies always performs two functions: it is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. Cultural studies aims to be both an intellectual and a pragmatic enterprise.

(4)             Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (that is, intuitive knowledge based on local cultures) and objective (so-called universal) forms of knowledge. It assumes a common identity and common interest between the knower and the known, between the observer and what is being observed.

(5)            Cultural studies is committed to a moral evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action. The tradition of cultural studies is not one of value-free scholarship but one committed to social reconstruction by critical political involvement. Thus cultural studies aims to understand and change the structures of dominance everywhere, but in industrial capitalist societies in particular.

(6)            Features of cultural studies is that it share four goals:

                           

1)    Cultural Studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.

2)    Cultural Studies is politically engaged as we discussed above the power relation which is related with political things. Cultural critics see themselves as ‘‘oppositional,’’ not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and ‘‘minority’’ or ‘‘subaltern’’ discourses.

3)    Cultural Studies denies the separation of ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ or elite and popular culture.

4)    Cultural Studies analyzes not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.

Conclusion:

      In short we can say that as we discussed the characteristics of cultural studies it also have some own limitations. The weaknesses of cultural studies lie in its very strengths, particularly its emphasis upon diversity of approach and subject matter. Cultural Studies can at times seem merely an intellectual smorgasbord in which the critic blithely combines artful helpings of texts and objects and then ‘‘finds’’ deep connections between them, without adequately researching what a culture means or how cultures have interacted.

The Reflection of the Victorian age in ''Oliver Twist''.

Topic: The Reflection of the Victorian age in ‘‘Oliver Twist’’.

Name: Baraiya Sonal Rameshbhai.

Class: M.A.Sem- 2.

Subject: The Victorian Literature.

Guidence: Heenaba Zala.

Submitted To: Smt.S.B.Gardi

                            Department of English.

                            M.K.Bhavnagar University.

     

Reflection of the Victorian Age in ‘‘Oliver Twist’’.

Introduction of the writer:

CHARLES DICKENS (1812 – 70):

    

 Dickens was born near Portsea, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. Charles, the second of eight children, was a delicate child, and much of his boyhood was spent at home, where he read the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Le Sage. The works of these writers were to influence his own novels very deeply. At an early age also he became very fond of the theater, a fondness that remained with him all his life, and affected his novels to a great extent.

                The Pickwick Papers was a great success; Dickens’s fame was secure, and the rest of his life was that of a busy and successful novelist. He lived to enjoy a reputation that was unexampled, surpassing even that of Scott; for the appeal of Dickens was wider and more searching than that of the Scottish novelist. He varied his work with much travelling-among other places to America (1842), to Italy (1844), to Switzerland (1846), and again to America (1867). His popularity was exploited in journalism, for he edited ‘‘The Daily News’’ (1846), and founded Household Words (1849) and All the Year Round (1859). In 1858 Dickens commenced his famous series of public readings. These were actings rather than readings, for he chose some of the most violent or affecting scenes from his novels and presented them with full-blown histrionic effect. The readings brought him much money, but they wore him down physically. They were also given in America, with the greatest success. He died in his favorite house, Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Introduction of the Victorian Era:

                    The Victorian period from the coronation of Queen Victoriain 1837 until her death in 1901 was an era of numerous disturbing social developments. During this period the writer were forced to write on the living issue of the society. Thus, it’s of literature of the Victorian era was directed to issues such as the growth of English democracy the education of the masses, the progress of industrial enterprise and rise of materialistic philosophy, and the problem of newly industrialized worked. Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901. It was time when a fresh generation in literature had arisen as the earlier generation had nothing to add.

             It was an era of material prosperity, political consciousness, democratic reforms, industrial and mechanical process, and progress, scientific advancement, social unrest, educational expansion empire building and religious uncertainty. This Victorian age made progress in the field of poetry, prose and fiction.

             It was an era of political peace and prosperity. The Victorian age was remarkable in terms of industrial revolution and its outcome in that context. There were a few colonial wars during this period but they did not have any adverse effect on the national life. In the early period of eighteenth century, the effect of French revolution was still there but by the middle of eighteenth century England was completely safe from any expansion. They made remarkable progress in industrial, commercial, and social life. In short it was an era of total safety and security under the reign of Queen Victoria.        

Social characteristics:

                       

(1)            Industrial Revolution:

                         Political peace and prosperity brought an immense material advancement and industrial progress it gave birth to industrial economy in England. Many miles and factories were established across the country. Industrial advancement also produced social disordered and economic sorrow in the society. On the one hand the industrial revolution brought the rich class of the mile owner and the capitalist, on the other hand it brought the poor class of labors and factory works. The life of the poor became horrible a wave of social unrest was blowing in England and it found expression in the works of the writer like Charles Dickens, Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, etc,.

        For novel ‘‘Oliver Twist’’, we can say that it is presented by Charles Dickens because of the effect of the industrial revolution. Charles Dickens, who was a lifelong champion of the poor, addresses these central issues in his early novel and timeless masterpiece Oliver Twist (1838). Child labor played an important role in the industrial revolution. In point of fact, the Victorian Era was characterized by the use of children to help develop the economy. Child laborers received less than the essentials needed at home, school, and at work. In a nutshell, the life of a young worker was in essence the life of a slave. Many children worked 16-hour days under atrocious conditions, as did their parents. As more people commuted to town to work, the demand for clothes and food grew. There were more things needed as the cities grew. More and more machines were beings built in factories and with that, the companies needed cheap labor. In Oliver twist, Charles Dickens describes some issues that occurred during the industrial revolution: children of the poor were forced by economic conditions to work, some kids were used as commodities, and there was a great difference between the first, middle, and third classes. Some parents sent their kids to work because they did not have enough money to support their family. Kids were being paid 3s a week. If there were no work available at the factory kids would just go back to the farm, or others would end up going on the streets and becoming prostitutes. Most prostitutes were between the ages of 15 and 22 years old during the industrial revolution. In Oliver Twist, the character Nancy is prostitute. She had no education and the only means of getting money was if she was on the street. Dickens was showing the times of the industrial revolution, and through this, the story seems very real. During the industrial revolution, kids were used as possessions. In the beginning of the novel, Oliver is used to pike oakum. He lives in an orphanage where the kids are used as slaves. They were sold door to door to the right buyer. In chapter 3, Oliver’s future darkens when Mr. Gamfield, a chimney sweep, applies to take the boy. Mr. Gamfield cares so little about Oliver that he does not care if the chimney catches on fire, as long as Oliver does his job.In the workhouse children were treated just like an animal. In the workhouse Oliver treated as a slave not as a child and he was doing work out of his capacity though they not have good foods with both qualities and quantities.  That is why Oliver wants some more foods with the famous dialogue

‘‘Please sir, I want some more.’’

And because of that he punished badly by Mr. Bumble. In Victorian era rich people believed for poor people that they were lazy and needed to be punished. They were born for becoming slave. So in Oliver Twist people in workhouses were deliberately treated harshly and the workhouses for child were similar to prisons.

(2)        Birth of social reform:

              The unhappy and terrible conditions of labors, miners, debtors and prisoners court attention in the eyes of social reforms. As a result, there was the birth of the Reform Bills which arouse the democratic consciousness among the Victorian people this age witnessed a conflict between aristocracy and democracy.

         Dickens as a socialist who wants to reforms society. In Oliver Twist Dickens situated himself and his readers among some complex areas of the criminal law… He criticizes the poor laws of 1834. That is why he put Oliver Twist in both social and individual. Dickens wants to reform society that is why he used satire with the laughter. And laughter is not innocent it is used as a device. It is the expression of thoughts that society usually suppressed or forbade. In the Oliver Twist we laugh not on the character but on the circumstances and with the laughter the novel frustrates the readers.

           Here as a reader we laugh on the character Oliver Twist because Dickens as a socialist he wants us to laugh forcefully because we are responsible for all these things, we are failure to given shelter. It is Dickens’s dream of ‘ideal’ society and that is why he wrote this novel through the intention of the reforms the society.

(3)            Growth in Population:

                  There was an expentional grown in population during the Victorian age.  The population of Great Britain at that time of the first sensors in 1801 was about ten and half millions but by the end of 1901 it was about 37 millions.

           In the Victorian age because of the industrial revolution people were wants more and more money to live life perfectly. But they have not enough money to support their family. Therefore children were sending for work. If there were no work available at the factory kids would just go back to the farm, or others would end up going on the streets and becoming prostitutes. Most prostitutes were between the ages of 15 and 22 years old during the industrial revolution.That is the reason for the population. That is why we see huge number of children in Victorian era. In Oliver Twist Nancy, who was prostitute and we seemed that the huge number of the children in this and they wants to got money at anyhow for clothes and food grew. That is why Oliver Twist pick pocket for food grew.

(4)Scientific Development:

                    It was period of extra ordinary scientific thinking. Manyscientific devotees dedicated their time to popularize scientific works like Darwin’s‘‘Origin of Species’’ despite the progress of science people in general were still governed by religious and moral consideration because Victorian were very religious at hart. There was a noticeable disagreement between religious and science and between moralist and scientist.

              Aristocratic people were rule over poor people through the power of both money and religious. They used these weapons to control poor people. For Example – Workhouse in Oliver Twist. In the workhouse children have food with the name of God though they not have good food with both quantities and qualities. ‘‘God is Good’’, ‘‘God is Love’’these label Dickens put in the workhouse in satirical way because when God is good then why all the children live in bad situation and why God not help them to live in better way.

(5)Domestic life and Social life:

           In domestic life emphasis was given on the/ to the authority or to the head of the family. The Victorian cultivated domestic virtues but women were considered as inferior to men. Education was not allowed to the women in general.

        Victorians laid emphasis on order decorum and decency. They were materialist by nature and did not care too much about the culture that they belonged to politically they were governed by narrow prejudices but intellectually they believed in progress. The Victorian compromise was observable in three branches of life such as -

1.    Political life,

2.    Religion,

3.   Science.

             In the Oliver Twist, there was also we seemed domestic life. In which Bill Sikes has power to control his wife Nancy. Nancy wants to help Oliver Twist but she can’t do this and that is why she doing all that things secretly. Nancy has no voice against her husband and at the climax her husband kills her without any mercy for her. So, we can say that she was not free to do whatever she wants to do. In social life they don’t like that they were called as cultural people.

Literary Characteristics –

(1)            The Uniqueness of Individuality:

                          It was a typical trait of Victorian Literature. The writers of this age were gifted with striking originality in outlook, method, style, viewpoint, character and temperamen. For Example –

Tennyson loved the admiration of strong independence. Bronte Sisters talked about loneliness in life. Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning cultivated the manner of strangeness in writing. William Thackeray loved to follow a haphazard path in the conduct of his stories. CharlesDickens was one of the most original writers and a profound novelist of that age. His style and method is extraordinary, his viewpoint is towards reformation of the society, and his character was original just like Oliver Twistbecause he was reflection of the Victorian reality that children don’t like to becoming criminal but situation become them criminal. In between Oliver Twist is differentiating from other children because of his observation and decision is unique and that is why he was individual by his nature. And maybe that is why Mr. Brownlow’s decision towards Oliver Twist was soft.

(2)            Moral Writing:

                   The Victorian way of writing both in prose and poetry had a moral purpose behind it. Their way of writing and presenting the subject was full of moral attitude. The motive behind this kind of literature was to make their fellow countrymen idealist in nature. Dickens has same idea behind their writing novel ‘‘Oliver Twist’’. Dickens has set up his own moral dilemma in his novel. Oliver Twist portrays Dickens’s distaste for the justice system through satire and wit. For Dickens it seems that justice is based on truth and morality, which are symptoms of choice. Oliver’s choice is truth and that is why at the end he achieved good justice. Not only Oliver but in this novel we find out some character who are also believed in this mentality. For example –

Charley Bates, he has sense of personal moral conscience. He was an esteemed member of Fagin’s gang, famed for his skill in thieving pocket handkerchiefs. Despite his wicked talents, the evil deeds of others eventually turn him towards reform. Reform comes through his defiance if Sikes in chapter 50 as, though well versed in maintaining secrecy, he chooses to betray Sikes to the police. He calls to the people ‘to take him out for God’s sake’ (337), a desperate plea to the almighty which has so far been absent from the lives of the Juveniles in Fagin’s gang. Charley’s significance, as the symbol of a moral conscience, reflects Dickens’s view of morality as a product of personal choice rather than religious intervention.

  

Conclusion:

           In short, we can say that the novel ‘‘Oliver Twist’’ is the reflection of the Victorian period in various ways. And Dickens purpose behind this novel is to reforms the society. It is Dickens’s dream of ‘ideal society’. 

The Reflection of the Romantic age in Frankenstein.

Topic: The Reflection of the Romantic age in Frankenstein.

Name: Baraiya Sonal Rameshbhai.

Class: M.A.Sem-2.

Subject: The Romantic Literature.

Guidence: Heenabe Zala.

Submitted To: Smt. S. B. Gardi

                              Department of English.

                              M.K.Bhavnagar University. 

                          

The Reflection of the Romantic age in Frankenstein.

Introduction of the writer:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley:

Born: 30 August 1797.

Died: 1 February 1851.

      She was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

        In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53.

          Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish P. B. Shelley’s works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodor 1835 and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser known works such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829 – 46) support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by P. B. Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Here many of the main ideas behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be seen in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley was deeply influenced by the romantics, and the reader of Frankenstein can certainly identify a number of characteristics of romanticism in this novel.

Introduction of the Romantic Age:

               The Romantic Age is believed to have started as a movement, which began in 1798 with publication of Lyrical Ballads. However it was not a sudden outburst but the result of long and gradual growth and development.

Definition of Romanticism:

    Romanticism it is process which is endless.

    It is an 18^th and 19^th century movement that is      frequently characterized by the following:

    A depiction of emotion and imagination.

    A depiction of the beauties of nature.

    Settings that are in exotic or remote locations. Old castles or mansions frequently play a big role.

    A hero or heroine who rebels against the social norms of his or her society.

    An intense in nature and its beauty and/or fierceness.

    An interest in the irrational realms of dreams, folk superstitions, legends, and ghosts.

    Language and characters that are frequently marked by emotional intensity.

Other characteristics of Romantic Era are:

(1)        All Romantic Literature is subjective:

       It is an expression of the feelings of the soul of the artist. The poet and writer do not care about the rules and regulations but gives free expressions to his or her emotions. Emphasis was given to inspiration and the intuition rather than on the observance of set rules. As the poet and writer is free to write on any theme and any form he or she likes and as a result we have a wide variety of romantic literature as the poets and writers is driven by powerful passions and imaginations, he does not care for the perfection of form.

             Here Frankenstein is also subjective novel because here Mary Shelly art monster, it is her expression of the feelings that she art like that. Because what happen that in the romantic era that women have no rights to write. Because patriarchal society they have. So, her strong feeling rather her rebel against the patriarchal society and may be that is why she portrays the characters like that. In that era writer is free to write on any theme and any form he or she likes. Therefore she described the gender difference.

(2)        Mysticism and the beauty of universe:

                    The poets and writers were always interested in the mystery, beauty and unsigned power of nature. For them the imaginative world was more real than the real world.

                In the Frankenstein Mary Shelly portrayed some mysterical elements, love of the beauty of the nature and unsigned power of the nature. For example – We noticed in these below quotations love of the beauty of the nature.

                         ‘‘I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities constant forever.’’ (pg – 10)

                          ‘‘I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of the ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.’’(pg – 15)

            It is Mary Shelly’s imaginative world and for her it is more real than the real. Because she gave the shape of the male as they are in reality.

(3)            The Pessimistic in Tone:

             The Romantic poet and writer his fisted individual the poet and writer may be dissatisfied with the circumstances of his own life, with this age with literary conventions and with the tradition of the day or with the general faith of humanity. There for Romantic literature is often pessimistic in tone. The Romantics revolted against the exciting condition and tried to escape into an imaginative world of their own. Therefore in Romantic literature we find the remote, the distant and the unknown delight.

           Mary Shelly looked pessimistic side of the humanity and may be because of that she became pessimistic by nature and as a result may be she wrote this work. It is her imaginative world because she inspired by her dream and then she wrote this novel. And dreams allow something to speak which is not normally present in the patriarchal course of things. In that era one of the pessimistic sides was that woman could not write and Mary Shelly dissatisfied with the circumstances. We also find in Frankenstein, desire to explore the unknown through such quotations like,

‘‘This breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid.’’                                                    (Pg – 9)

(4)            Individualism:

         Another characteristic of the Romantic Era is Individualism. People were believed in individualism. In this period Rousseau confesses that

        ‘‘I am not made like anyone I have seen; I sdare believe that I am not made like anyone in existence. If I am not superior, at least I am different.’’

       We seemed in the Frankenstein they belief in the power of the individual. For example –

                                              ‘‘Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise.’’(Pg – 10)

                           ‘‘…I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevated me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose…’’(Pg – 10)

(5)            Treatment of the Nature:

                If for the moment we take the restricted meaning of the word, and understand by ‘nature’ the commonphenomena of earth, air, and sea, we find the poetic attitude to nature altering profoundly. In the work of Cowper, Crabbe, and Gray the treatment is principally the simple chronicle and sympathetic observation of nature features. In the new race of poets the observation becomes more mature and intimate. Notably in the case of Wordsworth, the feeling for nature rises to a passionate veneration that is love and religion too. To Wordsworth nature is not only a procession of seasons and seasonal fruition: it is the eye of all things, natural and supernatural, into which the observant soul can peer and behold the spirit that inhabits all things. Nature is thus amplified and glorified; it is to be sought, not only in the flowers and the fields, but also in

                          ‘‘The light of sitting sun,

                          And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.’’

                This stanza talked about not only the out of the nature but inner nature of the man is also described. Romantic literature not only deals with outer nature but it is also deals with the nature that is in the mind of man. Nature plays an important role in Frankenstein, although to the reader familiar with romantic poetry, it may seem that nature is somewhat less important or less central than the role it plays, for example, in the poetry of Percy Shelley, or in the romanticism examples of poetry of Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Nonetheless, from the novel’s opening, the importance of the reader getting a sense of physical place is established by situating the text within a particular environment, the qualities of which will both mirror and contradict the inner states of the main characters. Victor notes that the landscape of the Orkneys and that of his native country are quite distinct. His description of the Orkneys is cold, barren, gray, and rough. In contrast, he recalls Switzerland as colorful and lively. He describes the Swiss hills in true Romanticism form as covered with verdant vines and the landscape as teeming with blue lakes that reflect the brilliant blue sky. The final comparison that he draws is between the winds of each place. In Switzerland, the winds are ‘‘but…the play of a lively infant’’ (pg – 42), not the tormented sea squalls that batter the rock face of the Orkneys. It is symbolic, of course, that Victor has chosen such a barren place to create the companion for the creature. The contrast between two places is as stark and distinct as the difference between Frankenstein’s Creature and the human world. The creature occupies a world that is bleak, that is attacked on all sides by an unforgiving set of conditions. Victor, his family, and the De Lacys occupy a world that has beauty, even though each has had to deal with occasional harsh realities. These appropriate pairings of characters with their environments will be re-emphasized throughout the novel, and the physical qualities of the environments will provoke contemplative thought for most of the main characters, especially Victor and the creature.

          On a more symbolic level, Frankenstein is clearly a novel about romantic striving against the customary boundaries or limitations placed on our existence. First, there is the obvious example of Victor Frankenstein pushing against his limitations as a human being by striving to play a God-like role by making the creature. For Victor, it is not satisfying enough to simply study philosophy and science and proceed on to a respectable profession. He must perfect the role of the scientist by attempting to accomplish the impossible, a process which is inevitably frustrated, as it must be, by the fact that overstepping human boundaries has significant consequences. Shelley’s Frankenstein is not a mad scientist, as his character has been reduced to over the years, but a scientist who is passionate about the primary questions and preoccupations of his time.

          In his Romantic quest for a scientific ideal-the perfect human-he creates a monster, which then must be held in check by other systems and institutions that humans have also created. While these institutions are more concrete and based in reality than the creation of the monster, they are equally imperfect. This novel helps the reader understand that there is no such state as perfection. Furthermore, there is no social experiment, whether based in reality or in fantasy that will result in an ideal solution. Rather, human beings will always create imperfect institutions and inventions, and given this, must be prepared to accept responsibility and anticipate the potential consequences.

          Victor Frankenstein is not the only character to strive against and challenge traditional boundaries, however. The creature the Victor makes is engage in his own struggle to experience sublime connection with his environment and with other living beings. The creature makes multiple attempts to connect with other beings, especially before he realizes that he is different from them. Almost all of his efforts are in vain, however. The creature lacks speech and obvious physical characteristics that would make him more recognizable to human beings. The pain of his multiple rejections leads him to believe that, as explained in one of the important quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, ‘‘The human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union…If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear…’’(Pg – 173). This decision signals the decline of all of the major characters, and foreshadows the novel’s terrible denouement. In a twist on the typical romantic text, which, if it does end happily, ends on a thoughtful, meditative note, this novel ends with the characters having effect no significant resolution amongst themselves. They have all realized the impossibility of striving against the roles to which they have been assigned in life, and they do not seem to be able to identify any other options for themselves.

       But here Mary Shelley treat nature in different way, she treat Nature v/s nature. Here Frankenstein wants to create Monster and it is against of the rule of the nature. And maybe that is why at the end of the novel he got nothing accepts tragic fact because too much exaggeration is always destroying.

Conclusion:

              Mary Shelley’s novel ‘‘Frankenstein’’ examines many social issues present during the Romantic Period. An analysis of its context reveals just how much it draws upon the Romantic dogma of the 1800’s and how Shelley attempts to warns us of the consequences of our fixation with omnipotence and our ventures into unrestrained scientific progress. Similarly Ridley Scott’s film ‘‘Blade Runner’’ presents a somber view of the earth’s future. It explores humanity’s dislocation from the nature world as a consequence of consumerism, greed and scientific progress.