LITERATURE QUESTIONS
EARLY BRITISH LITERATURE
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Frankenstein
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Pride and Prejudice
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Hamlet
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None of the above
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Detailed explanation-1: -Mary Shelley uses many gothic elements in Frankenstein. She incorporates the destruction of family via revenge and the blurring of the line between life and death. She also ties in secrets threatening to be revealed and horror elements such as corpses, reanimation, and dark scientific experiments.
Detailed explanation-2: -In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s debut novel, Frankenstein, marked a shift in gothic horror by changing the typical gothic villain from an evil man or supernatural creature into an physical embodiment of human folly, brought to life through the power of science.
Detailed explanation-3: -However, Frankenstein cannot be considered as the first Gothic novel. It is a mixture of Romance and Gothic elements, weaved together to give us a unique story never written before. Gothic novels have existed since a long time in English literature. The first Gothic novel was ‘The Castle of Otranto’ by Horace Walpole.
Detailed explanation-4: -The classic horror stories Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are in the Gothic tradition but introduce the existential nature of humankind as its definitive mystery and terror.
Detailed explanation-5: -Frankenstein is simultaneously the first science-fiction novel, a Gothic horror, a tragic romance and a parable all sewn into one towering body. Its two central tragedies – one of overreaching and the dangers of ‘playing God’, the other of parental abandonment and societal rejection – are as relevant today as ever.