Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel in conscious dialogue with canonical classics and contemporary works. It contains references to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and P. B. Shelley, but also to Cervantes and Milton. It is the latter’s Paradise Lost which informs the themes and structure of the novel more than any other source. Like many of her contemporaries, Mary Shelley draws parallels between Milton’s Satan and the Titan Prometheus of Greek myth. However, the two are not simply equated (as in Byron’s poem, “Prometheus”), but appear in various facets through both Victor Frankenstein and his creation. Furthermore, God, Zeus, and Adam are also evoked through these characters. Though its treatment of these mythical figures identifies it with Romantic Satanism,[1] Frankenstein reaches a moral conclusion at odds with the ideals of Shelley’s contemporaries, and far closer to those of Milton.

            The novel’s alternative title is “The Modern Prometheus.” It can be asked who in the story is supposed to be Promethean. Since this title is the alternative to “Frankenstein,” it seems obvious that the doctor is meant, although it will be shown later that the monster also bears significant similarities to the Titan.

            According to the Greek myth, Prometheus (whose name means “forethought”), against the will of Zeus, stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. With fire came the beginning of a crafts and civilisation itself. In this respect, Victor Frankenstein’s quest for knowledge is Promethean, as is his belief that his researches will benefit humanity.

            The other consequence of the theft of fire is that it incurs the wrath of Zeus, who had Prometheus chained to a rock where he would undergo the perpetual torture of having his liver daily eaten by an eagle (some versions of the myth cite a vulture as the bird of prey, but the eagle is a symbol of Zeus, and thus more appropriate). Frankenstein is treading upon the domain of the gods in his attempt to create life, and he suffers perpetual torture without death at the hands of his own creation, who does not eat his liver, but destroys the lives of his loved ones.

            Both Prometheus and Frankenstein are given the opportunity to end their suffering, but they refuse out of pride and stubbornness—heroic virtues in the classical world, sins in Christendom. The god Oceanos tells Prometheus, “give up this angry mood of yours and look for means of getting yourself free of trouble… you are not yet humble, still you do not yield to your misfortunes, and you wish, indeed, to add some more to them” (Aeschylus, lines 317-318, 322-323).[2] Likewise, Victor is the author of his own suffering, as the creature explains, “This passion is detrimental to me, for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess” (Shelley 191). Victor is also given the opportunity to stop the damage; all he has to do is provide the creature with a partner, “I swear…that if you grant my prayer…you shall never behold me again” (193). Frankenstein finally refuses due to his stubborn adherence to a faulty assessment of the situation.

            In the Roman version of the story of Prometheus, the Titan is also the creator of human beings:

…earth, but new divided from the sky,

And, pliant, still retain’d th’ethereal energy;

Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,

…From such rude principles our form began;

And earth was metamorphosed into man. (Ovid, quoted by Hindle 24).

The parallel with Frankenstein, who seeks to “animate the lifeless clay” (Shelley 102) is obvious, but there is more to the doctor than the Titan, namely, an egoistic motivation: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (Shelley 101).

            It is here that the Satanic aspect of Herr Frankenstein manifests. Milton’s Satan (whose name means “Adversary”), like Prometheus, defies divine law and is punished. The difference is that Satan’s motives are primarily egoistic.[3] In the Christian myth,[4] Satan leads an army of rebel angels against the omnipotent God and is cast, defeated, into Hell. The vices highlighted by Milton through his rendering of the story are pride, arrogance, ambition, disobedience, and irreverence. It is easy to see why political radicals, such as William Godwin, and poets like Byron and P. B. Shelley would feel sympathy for the devil. Satan embodies all the classical heroic virtues which are antithetical to the morality represented by Christianity’s God-on-the-cross.[5]      Frankenstein’s creation of the monster is the transgression, “which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe” (Shelley 136). Satan discovers that his rebellion gave birth to Sin and Death who eventually find their way to Earth, and Frankenstein is forced to reflect on “the fiend whom I had let loose” (137): “William, Justine, and Henry – they all died by my hands” (229). Satan refuses to admit the folly of warring with the almighty and blames “fate” (Milton I.116), as does Frankenstein: “Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction” (Shelley 90). Finally, Victor’s refusal to give in to the monster’s demands, “no torture shall ever extort a consent from me…you shall never make me base in my own eyes,” (190) echoes Satan’s defiance:

            That glory never shall his wrath or might

            Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace

            With suppliant knee, and deify his power

            …that were low indeed; (Milton I.110-114)

            The monster, on the other hand, has his own resemblances to Satan. Rejected by his creator and by society, he swears revenge: “from that moment I declared ever-lasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery” (Shelley 181). Compare Satan: “We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or by guile eternal war, / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe” (Milton I.120-122).

            Unlike Satan, however, the creature does not fall from a prior state of grace; he is born into hell: “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (Shelley 146). This is one of many comparisons between the creature and Adam, who is quoted in the frontispiece of the novel: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man?” (Milton X.743-744). The inclusion of this quote in the frontispiece puts the blame for the creature’s acts and agonies clearly on the shoulders of Victor Frankenstein, the maker. While Milton’s God may be blameless because all evil is justified by a greater good, according to popular theodicy, “his creating hand / Nothing imperfect or deficient left / Of all that he created,” (IX.344-346) there is no certainty of perfection underlying the genesis in Frankenstein’s lab, as he admits, “my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect” (Shelley 101).

            Among the imperfections of Frankenstein’s act of creation is the lack of forethought to provide his creature with a companion. Adam asks God, “In solitude / What happiness?” (Milton VIII.364-365). The creature, who has read Paradise Lost, (Shelley 173) is acutely aware of this lack, “Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence,” (Shelley 175) and like Adam, he requests that his maker fashion him an Eve:

I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create. (189)

At this point, the creature could, with love, become a new Adam, or with further rejection, turn Satanic.

            It is in his envy of human society (i.e. companionship) that the monster appears most Satanic and, as with Satan, it is the possibility of happiness that would soothe his anger. According to Satan, “Ease would recant / Vows made in pain,” (Milton IV.96-97) while the creature says, “If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred and a hundredfold; for that one creature’s sake I would make peace with the whole kind!” (Shelley 191).

            However, ease is denied both, and both turn to evil in spite. As Satan gazes upon the sleeping Eve, he is so moved by her beauty that for a moment he forgets his war:

            …Her heavenly form

            Angelic, but more soft and feminine,

            Her graceful innocence, her every air

            Of gesture or least action, overawed

            His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved

            His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.

            That space the Evil One abstracted stood

            From his own evil, and for the time remained

            Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,

            Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. (Milton IX.457-466)

Yet, on recognition that she is not for him, his temper again flares:

            But the hot hell that always in him burns,

            Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his delight,

            And tortures him now more, the more he sees

            Of pleasure not for him ordained. (467-470)

This is exactly what the creature goes through just before he discovers the sleeping Justine, when he sees her portrait:

In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust or affright.

Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage?

…the murder I have committed because I am forever robbed of all that she could give me. (Shelley 188)

Like Satan, the monster chooses to war with his creator through that which his creator loves. In Satan’s case, this indirect assault is necessitated by the imperviousness of his main target, “Thank him who puts me, loath, to this revenge / On you, who wrong me not, for him who wronged” (Milton IV.386-387) but is also motivated by envy of humanity itself:

…Thus these two,

Imparadised in one another’s arms,

The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill

Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust,

Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,

Among our other torments not the least,

Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines! (IV.505-511)

In the monster’s case, the mortal Frankenstein could be killed, but would thereby be free of the pain that the creature is forced to live with. Upon murdering William, he exclaims, “I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him” (Shelley 187). His murder of William and framing of Justine are but means to the end of torturing Victor, but he too admits of Satanic envy: “Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me,” (175) “Shall each man...find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?” (212).

Here the parallels cease, for though Satan’s attempt to overthrow God may be noble in an heroic sense, he is still justly punished, while the creature is punished for Christian virtues. He is shot at for rescuing a drowning girl (185-186), and is shunned when he humbly pleads for companionship (180). In this respect, Frankenstein’s monster resembles Prometheus, who laments, “It was mortal man to whom I gave great privileges and for that was yoked in this unyielding harness” (Aeschylus 108-109). It is the injustice of his plight which justifies Prometheus’ spite, “I am the enemy of all the gods that gave me ill for good,” (975-976) and it is this same sense of injustice which drives the monster over the brink into villainy:

This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. (Shelley 186)

            Victor Frankenstein is Promethean, Satanic, and Godlike. The monster resembles Prometheus, Satan, and Adam. Frankenstein takes a moralistic attitude, and indeed directly harms no one, but his great aspirations to be a creator of life and his principled obstinacy in refusing to make a companion for his creature (on the grounds that they may perpetuate a race of monsters (210)) result in general carnage. The monster, though an active killer, is painted with limited sympathy and provides reasons for his actions, yet the fact remains that he is a killer. Perhaps high ideals and aspirations are noble, but strict adherence to these, without regard for material consequences leads to disaster. Perhaps society makes one a monster, but a monster is still a monster, and though we may feel sympathy for the devil, he is still a devil.

            To whom could this moral be addressed? It is significant that the auditor of Frankenstein’s tale is the ambitious explorer Robert Walton, who is on a Promethean quest to provide an, “inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole” (64). Like Frankenstein, and certain other idealists, he is prepared to sacrifice all for this vision:

…how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprize. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. (77)

It is revealed that this adventurer is a failed poet (64). Add to this that Frankenstein, for a time, distracts himself by reading classics (116), like Percy Shelley after the death of their child (Journal Entries, in Longman, 939), and it is clear that Mary Shelley’s target is precisely her family and comrades, the Romantic Satanists themselves: William Godwin (whose politics are echoed in the monster’s story of how he became corrupt (Hindle 29)), Lord Byron, and P. B. Shelley.

The term “Romantic Satanist” doesn’t quite fit this novel. Like other writers in the subgenre, Shelly confounds Satan and Prometheus, and is sympathetic to both. However, she does not celebrate Satanic values. Her tone is one not of praise, but of pity and admonishment. Frankenstein may have noble intentions, like Prometheus, but like Satan, his ambition brings Sin and Death into the world. The creature is an object of greater sympathy than his creator, but one cannot help but feel horror at his murder of innocents. With Frankenstein, Mary Shelley draws on the same myths as her contemporaries, but towards the end of warning them against going too far in their worship of Satanic-Promethean ideals.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Trans. David Grene. in Greek Tragedies, Vol. 1. Ed. David Grene, Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

Hindle, Maurice. Introduction to Frankenstein.

Milton, John. Milton. Ed. Maynard Mack. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Maurice Hindle. Markham, Ontario: Penguin, 1985.

-----Journal Entries. In Longman Anthology.

Wolfson, Susan, and Peter Manning, editors. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2A: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Don Mills: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.