Key Terms for This Theme

📖 Key Terms for This Theme

Ambition

In Shelley's usage, not simply the desire to succeed but the desire to transgress natural and moral limits. Distinguish from healthy curiosity (the Creature's education) — ambition in the novel is marked by the refusal to consider consequences.

Promethean

Relating to the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and was punished for eternity. In literary analysis, "Promethean" describes a figure whose ambition transgresses acceptable limits and brings suffering as a result. Use it: "Shelley positions Victor as a Promethean figure — the subtitle declares this from the title page."

Hubris

(Greek: excessive pride or self-confidence) In tragedy, the fatal flaw of believing yourself above the limits that govern others. Victor's hubris is his conviction that he can create life without being morally accountable for what he creates.

The Enlightenment

The 18th-century European intellectual movement centred on reason, science, and progress. Frankenstein was written as Romantic reaction to Enlightenment confidence was growing — Shelley's novel questions not reason itself but reason without moral constraint.

Romanticism

The early 19th-century literary and artistic movement that emphasised imagination, emotion, and nature as correctives to Enlightenment rationalism. Frankenstein is a Romantic novel: nature is powerful, sublime, and a moral counterweight to Victor's laboratory.