Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We know from Freud that monsters and the creatures of horror tales are embodiments of the id.

We send our monster to do our work—that which we wish or fear to wish to do ourselves.

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard.

when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day.

I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future.

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.