[1] The Romantic hero is often the protagonist in a literary work, and the primary focus is on the character's thoughts rather than their actions.
Literary critic Northrop Frye noted that the Romantic hero is often "placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting".
[2] Other characteristics of the Romantic hero include introspection, the triumph of the individual over the "restraints of theological and social conventions",[1] wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation.
[citation needed] Usually estranged from his more grounded, realist biological family and leading a rural, solitary life, the Romantic hero may nevertheless have a long-suffering love interest, him or herself victimised by the hero's rebellious tendencies, with their fates intertwined for decades, sometimes from their youths to their deaths.
(See Tatyana Larina, Elizabeth Bennet, Eugenie Grandet, et al.) Romantic heroes and similar characters were popularly used in Gothic fiction in Britain and elsewhere.