"The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye."

             Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth have something very important in common, they were both romantic writers. As evidenced in Shelley's Frankenstein and Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", romantic writers have a focus on nature, how it affects humans, how humans affect it, and even just how pretty it looks.  Interestingly, Shelley's father was a friend of Samuel T. Coleridge, who was a founder of the Romantic era along with Wordsworth, so even from birth Shelley was thrown into and influenced by romantic writing.
             The main point of this blog is to discuss the significance of Shelley's usage of "Tintern" in her novel. She quoted the lines that can be seen above during a scene where Victor Frankenstein is fondly describing his best friend Henry Clerval. These lines are fitting for Clerval because, as Victor says, "He was a being formed in the 'very poetry of nature' ... The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour" (135). It is so very fitting for Clerval to be described by lines from one of Wordsworth's poems because Clerval is a true romanticist and Wordsworth was one of the Fathers of Romanticism. In fact Clerval is so in love with nature that Frankenstein says, "[Clerval] felt as if he had been transported to fairy-land and enjoyed happiness seldom tasted by man" (134). This line reminds me of Wordsworth and the way he describes his feelings towards nature when he was younger. He enjoyed the heck out of nature and that is exactly what Clerval is doing. I think that Shelley molded Clerval, although I am sure that she had the idea of Frankenstein's best friend from the beginning, to be like Wordsworth. Growing up with her father knowing a man who knew him must have put some sort of awe or reverence for him or even just knowledge about him into her. Not to mention that her father was her school teacher also, so he probably taught her a lot about Wordsworth and Coleridge. Shelley may have wanted to honor him in some way, so she included his poem as a direct indicator that Clerval is Wordsworth.
             The line "Haunted me like a dark passion" could have also been an allusion to Frankenstein, especially since he and Clerval are doubles of each other. He had a passion for science and it turned dark after he made the creature and then the creature haunted him. "the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood" these are several locations where scenes in  Frankenstein occur. Victor sees the creature climbing up the rocky mountain and most of the creature's story takes place in a depressing forest. Maybe Shelley after reading this poem, Shelley's idea for her novel was strongly influenced by these lines. That could be another reason why she would want to use his poem in her novel, because he was a great inspiration for it.
               So basically I think that Shelley included these lines in chapter 18, not only to show that Clerval is an embodiment of Wordsworth, but also to honor the poem and the poet that influenced her novel.