Question

How does Shelley create her Gothic atmosphere?

Answer 1

Through her ability to create physical and psychological terror

Answer 2

The Gothic narrative is a literary genre closely related to terror and subsumed in it, to the point that it is difficult to differentiate one from the other. The setting is usually romantic: In shady landscapes, dark places, old buildings, fascinating, strange and unusual characters. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the English novelist imagined Frankenstein inspired by a nightmare that he had at eighteen years of age and in his narrative meets the Gothic style. The most famous story of this author of Frankenstein creates the Gothic atmosphere making use of the aforementioned elements of the narrative and is almost a philosophical and moral treatise on the impossibility of man being God and creating life through a monstrous being composed of pieces of stitched corpses that rebel against their creative doctor. It is therefore a dark and gloomy story, considered also the first literary work of science fiction.