How are external ‘beings’ represented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and other Gothic texts throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

1 July 2019 by Aimee Wright When reading Frankenstein for the first time, I had the idea that Victor Frankenstein and his creature were the same being; maybe the creature was a part of Victor's psyche, a figment of his imagination. I realised that Mary Shelley creates an ambiguity around whether the creature is truly real,...

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – Summary

1st of September 2018 by Aimee Wright Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice to display the social difficulties within the family relating to marriage, money and appearances. The main family, the Bennet family, is composed of five unmarried - which is an important factor to the story - daughters, Elizabeth, Lydia, Jane, Mary and Kitty, and...

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887: Sleep, Belief and Change

19th August 2018 by Aimee Wright Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward is a short novel about the nineteenth century's optimistic view of the twenty-first century. Bellamy has built a communist society without money, only credit, without political parties, just citizens, and with a technological advantage that they did not have in 1887, where the main character and...

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men – Character Analysis

13th June 2018 by Aimee Wright Of Mice and Men is a classic, of which many students (especially when I was at school) despised due to the idea alone that we had to annotate it. However, Steinbeck has written one of the best books of our time. Character Analysis: George: as the leader, Steinbeck has...

Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming to Dover!

17th May 2018 by Aimee Wright This poem is a detailed description of immigration to the UK and the subsequent fusing of multiple identities and ethnicities. Nagra, himself, was born in Britain but with Sikh / Punjabi background, appears to perfectly identify what it is like to be fused with two different ethnicities through the...

“I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde”: the split personality erupted

17th April 2018 by Aimee Wright Jekyll drunk the serum that made him turn into Hyde. But why did that happen? If I drunk the same serum, I do not believe that I would turn into my "evil twin" unless there was a psychological stimulant for it. When reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, I was...

Simon Armitage’s Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass

27th December 2017 by Aimee Wright This free verse poem is about the constant battle between man and nature, and Simon Armitage has demonstrated so beautifully that man will never win, which is the sad and unavoidable truth. He has also demonstrated the contemporary battle between man and machinery, which is a very industrial concept,...

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – 19-20

6th October 2017 by Aimee Wright Chapter 19: We are now in the part called 'Birthday'. Offred is dreaming that she leaves the Commander's room and comes into her home, where her daughter is. Offred describes what her daughter is specifically wearing - 'her small green nightgown with the sunflower on the front' - thinking...

John Keats’ ‘In drear-nighted December’

13th August 2017 by Aimee Wright Made up of three octets, Keats has created a beautiful outlook on the winter, just like he glorified autumn in To Autumn. We will summarise and analyse In drear-nighted December. Stanza 1: Keats begins the poem with the title of the poem - 'In drear-nighted December,' - and the sound that...