The Romantic era of literature brought a reverent attitude towards nature, writes utilizing the external elements of their characters to ease emotional distraughtness and connect them with humanity. This interaction between people and their natural environments is attributed to ecological thinking, which is the recognizing of the natural world and its effects on the relationships and thoughts of humans.
Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the characters’ internal struggles with reason are silenced by the sublimity of their ecological thinking, which also serves to connect people to one another. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, ecological thinking allows for the natural environments to serve as a sanctuary for Victor from his mistakes.
After the Creature kills Victor’s brother, William, and Victor’s family servant Justine fatally takes the blame, Victor immediately retreats to the mountains. Upon arriving to the mountains, “the very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more… striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all, myself…. alighted and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair” (Shelley 61). The weight of his guilt forces Victor on the grass, literally throwing Victor into nature.
Victor retreats to nature in situations of anxiety because the sublimity of the natural world brings out the better qualities of mankind, such as connectivity and a happier sense of self. This is seen when the Creature is recounting his two-year journey out into the world to Victor, noting that the “genial warmth of spring greatly altered the aspect of the earth. Men who before this changed seemed to have been hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of cultivation… Happy, happy earth! (Shelley 76).
Men who were isolated began to reach out and interact with one another when their environment turned into one of warmth and rebirth–showing that ecological thinking allows for nature to directly influence the moods and spirits of humanity. This same sense of ecological thinking is present in William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”, when the narrator, believed to be Wordsworth, feels a spiritual resurgence and a connection with his sister because of his natural surroundings.
The poem follows the narrator’s internal monologue as he revisits a place of nostalgia that ignited his love of nature. His fears that the picturesque scene of his childhood has been idealized are quieted as he sees the place for the first time in five years, falling in love with the environment all over again. He even credits nature as “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being” (Wordsworth LL. 109-111). His ecological thinking recharges his soul and makes him feel joyful about life once again.
Nature also connects the narrator to his sister, who he sees himself in because of their love of the countryside. He acknowledges his sister the first time in the poem as his “dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch/The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes” (Wordsworth LL. 115-120). Mary Wollstonecraft also finds a deep spiritual connection with nature. In Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Wollstonecraft writes extensively on the environment around her, how it affects her mood and the societies who embrace nature.
Wollstonecraft tethers her emotional state to nature, writing “now all my nerves keep time with the melody of nature. Ah! let me be happy whilst I can… / must flee from thought, and find refuge from sorrow in a strong imagination — the only solace for a feeling heart”. Nature enables her to forget reality and reason by immersing herself in the beauty of the natural world–similar to how Victor Frankenstein loses himself in the sublimity of ecological thinking in order to forget his own mentality.
Mary Wollstonecraft also writes on her belief that ecological thinking and indulgence in nature furthers humanity. She compares Swedish, English and American country girls to “the country girls of Ireland and Wales [who] equally feel the first impulse of nature, which, restrained in England by fear or delicacy, proves that society is there in a more advanced state”. She attributes charms and manners to a warmer climate and societies who demonstrate the love of nature through ecological thinking.
When one is more present in the natural world, their spirit is livened, which contributes to a more congenial way of acting and a warm towards others. Wollstonecraft acknowledges this when she sees the Swedish children who interact so little with nature, being kept in their homes and this having poor social skills. Ecological thinking–thinking in a way that considers the external environment and its effects on humans, is an important tool in stabilizing the moods of characters and reconnecting them to one another.