The development of Clerval as a figure representative of Romanticism parallel to the infection of Frankenstein with the disease of scientific knowledge attributes meaning to both. Through their contrast, we see a strongly positive presentation of the ideas of the Romantic movement, held in high esteem by writers and poets during the time in which Shelley composed Frankenstein. We can also view Romanticism as a cure for the empirical, an alternative to the drive toward hard science as a field that betters the human experience.
Unfortunately, we also find it possible to interpret through the success of the monster that artificial, experimentally-based reasoning boasts the strength to quash the still-blossoming poetic genre. Shelly potentially represents this devastating end to the Romantic period as inevitable by her expression of the murder of the young Clerval, though whether she completely believes this as truth remains unclear.
We can be certain, however, that this work, despite its publication date, depicts a battle that still rages—the intuitive versus the empirical, the natural soul versus the artificial machine—and one that will continue for years to come. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. James Rieger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Filed under Collegiate Essay , Critical Essays.
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After the horrors of creating the Monster, Henry encourages Victor to take delight in the more simple and rewarding aspects of life - the beauty of nature and the innocence of children. Looking back, Victor can see that Henry's true devotion is in contrast to his own abandonment of his creation and that his ambition was little more than ' a selfish pursuit '. After Frankenstein's recovery, Clerval convinces his father to allow him to join Frankenstein at the university, studying classical and Eastern languages:.
Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for the minutiae of science. Languages were his principal study; and he sought, but acquiring their elements, to open a field for self-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, gained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of Greek and Latin. He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the oriental languages, as thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself.
Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the East, as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise.
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