Write an essay of not more than 1500 words, referring to Great Expectations and Frankenstein, discussing how origins are explored through realist and other conventions.

As Edward Said remarked in 'On Repetition' in The World, The Text and The Critic (1984), 'the realist novel is concerned with seeing people as peculiarly individual beings facing an individual destiny' (The Realist Novel, p. 68); we can certainly see this is evident in both Great Expectations and Frankenstein . In both novels we, as readers, are faced with tumultuous happenings concerning the quest for identity. Through using the, occasionally very loose, framework of the realist novel both seek to explore other genres to illustrate the wider psychological impact of the search for one's o…