The Intersections of Epistolarity and Sentimentalism in The Sorrows of Young Werther and Frankenstein

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is a text that literary critics have long noted for its formal complexity. From layering multiple narrative levels to incorporating epistolary narration, the novel stands out as a fusion of diverse literary forms that is as hybridized as the Creature it depicts. This narrative structure inevitably carries interpretive weight while also shedding light on literature’s ability to reflect and complicate the cultural values that shape it. Sentimentalism, in particular, is a prominent social ideal with which Frankenstein engages, and the novel’s formal qualities affect how sentimentalism functions in the text. For instance, Kirsten Martin notes that “Shelley’s frames layer on top of one another to guide the reader through all of the novel’s disparate pieces. This technique … creates the conditions for sympathetic engagement” between readers and characters (601-02). Similarly, Hyewon Shin posits that “the epistolary frame fosters affective connections between characters (letter writers) and readers (their addressees)” (546). Such scholars associate sentimental emotions with the novel’s epistolary, multi-level structure, a formal quality that Frankenstein shares with one of the many texts that its characters reference, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Of course, the explicit mention of this work in Frankenstein is admittedly brief; however, both texts’ combining of epistolary and framed narrative structures merits a closer reading that considers the evolving relationships between literary forms and cultural values that these novels exemplify. In short, a comparison of these works will bring to light a structural and functional shift in epistolarity, beginning as a vehicle for communicating interior emotional experience and transitioning into a simultaneous call for and performance of outwardly focused sentimental response. This transition will help to elucidate Frankenstein’s Gothic complication and distortion of cultural values, such as, in this case, sentimentalism.