Paul Lee
Professor Calabrese
English 340 - Writing the Critical Essay (5th Essay)
13 March 1995
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Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Prometheus


Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?--
Paradise Lost [X. 743-5]



Mary Shelley wrote the ghost story, Frankenstein, with allusions to Milton’s Paradise Lost as described in the beginning of the book, while Percy Shelley wrote, in his mythic poetry (Prometheus Unbound), Prometheus as a “more poetical” version of Milton’s Satan. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in London, in March 1818 and “Frankenstein” is known as the word of a monster rather than of a monster’s creator. Victor Frankenstein is not poet Shelly but is the “Modern Prometheus” who is a very apt term for Shelly, because the relationship Shelley and Mary encouraged Mary to write Frankenstein (Lee 115) and Shelley also suggested her to make the novel rather than a short story. James Rieger detailed the background of Frankenstein , which Shelley influenced mary’s work:
Percy Bysshe Shelley worked on Frankenstein at every stage, from the earliest
drafts through the printer’s proofs, with Mary’s final “carte blanche to make
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what alterations you please.” He understand the matter when he wrote to the
publishers, “I have paid considerable attention to the correction of such few
instances of baldness of style as necessarily occur in the production of a very
young writer....” We know that he was a more than an editor. (Rieger xliv)
Prometheus is the mythic figure who best suits the uses of Romantic poetry and has the full Romantic capacity for creation and destruction. As Johanna Smith points out, Percy Shelley praised “the novel as ‘source of powerful and profound emotion’ and other critics raised the issue “how sensational fiction might (mis)educate its readers” to Shelley’s review on Mary’s Frankenstein (Smith 191). Thus I am going to find what nature of Prometheus in Mary Shelley’s sensational fiction makes the reader an important modern mythic horror story.
Comparing to the characters in the works of Shelley and Milton, in Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound and Milton’s Paradise Lost, the same Prometheus who is taken as an analogue of the crucified Christ is regarded also as a type of fallen Satan Lucifer is a son of light justly cast out by an offended heaven. By the Romantic readings of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein, we understand that the double identity of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus is a vital element. Milton’s Satan as a Prometheus went wrong, as desire restrained until it became only the shadow of desire, a diminished double of creative energy. Shelley went further in judging Milton’s Satan as an imperfect Prometheus, inadequate because his mixture of heroic and base qualities. As Mary Shelley titled her novel as “The Modern Prometheus,” Victor Frankenstein is a scientist who
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studies natural science and practices DNA things for creation of his monster. In terms of modern science, I am sure that Frankenstein far exceeds Milton’s and Percy Shelley’s Prometheus.
Frankenstein’s monster tempts his revengeful creator on through an actual world of ice with a nightmare rather than dream of desire. The monster is the total form of Frankenstein’s creative power and is more imaginative than his creator and is also more intellectual and more emotional than his maker who is a scientist. Indeed, he excels Milton’s God in Paradise Lost. The greatest paradox and most astonishing achievement of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are that the monster is more human than his creator. This nameless monster is more lovable than his creator and more hateful, and gives the reader conscious realization of the self. Like Shelly’s Alastor and Epipsyche, Frankenstein and his monster are the generous halves of the one self. Frankenstein is the mind and emotions turned in upon themselves (Bloom 3-4). In Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound the hero Prometheus, like Frankenstein, has made a monster, but this monster is Jupiter, the God of all institutional and historic religions, including organized Christianity. Salvation comes through love alone but love in this Shelley’s poem is always closely shadowed by an interesting dramatic ruins.
As Robert Kiely observed in his essay, “Frankenstein,” “The entire narrative of Frankenstein is as three confessions to individuals... First, the young explorer Robert Walton writes to his sister in England as he journeys into the Arctic. There he rescues Frankenstein [Mary’s Prometheus] from a shipwreck and listens to his tale, which, in turn,
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contains a long narrative spoken by the monster to its creator. There is not a great deal of difference in the styles of the three narratives.... Walton’s sister is an English lady who needs to be reassured that her brother is not in too much danger. He is lonely and he
writes to her in detail about everything, trying usually to maintain an air of competence and calm. Frankenstein is a genius on the verge of despair and death, brought to glow again by the admiration of his rescuer. He tells his story to dissuade Walton from ruining himself similarly through excessive ambition.... The monster wants pity from his creator; his narrative is the most sentimental of the three and the modest pathetically modest in its claims” (Bloom 75-76).
While the main theme of the novel is the monstrous consequences of egotism rather than the virtue of friendship, talking about the family relations, Frankenstein, not only all the major characters, but the minor characters as well seems to be echoes of each other. Both Elizabeth and Justine are found by the Frankenstein family and rescued from poverty, and both accuse themselves, in different ways, of the murder of Frankenstein’s youngster brother. When she hears of his death, Elizabeth cries out. Justine, too, is a kind of sister of Frankenstein. She adored Madame Frankenstein. There are the parents and Frankenstein himself is a father, the creator of the monster. The monster asks him for the gift of a bride and he gives Frankenstein a bride, and a sister. Frankenstein’s father, in caring for him, behaves to his son as the monster would have Frankenstein behave. Like George Levine points out in his essay, “Frankenstein” and the Tradition of Realism, we can find that “there is no simple way to define the relations between parents and offspring
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in this novel. Frankenstein’s father is loved and generous, and marries the daughter of an unsuccessful merchant who, in his pride, almost brings his whole family down...
Frankenstein ignores his creation and... destroys his family as a consequence. Father and sons are almost equally responsible and irresponsible....” (Bloom 89).
Frankenstein himself confesses that he has failed in his responsibility to his creature. He, finally, has suffered none of the injustices from which the monster suffers and been loved, encouraged by his family, and given the gift of a lifelong companion, but he is the original evil. Frankenstein does not create a bride for his monster because he fears that the new monster will not feel herself bound by the original monster’s own good intentions. At this point, we can admit that this monster’s story implies the primacy of responsibility to family and community. It is my essential point of view to comment on Frankenstein as an ambitious hero of Mary Shelley’s modern Prometheus. He wants to change things and to improve them in the structures of society as cruel and unjust. Although my studying Frankenstein is a mere simple generalization, I think I can understand the relations of all the characters and events in the novel are interwoven with bloodkinship. Percy Shelley’s notorious preoccupation with incest, which I have mentioned in my essay (Lee 114), appears in Mary’s novel being influenced by his romance and Romantic poetry. For Frankenstein as Mary Shelley’s Prometheus, I think it was the desire both for glory and to aid human being that led him to create the monster.


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Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. ed. Mary Shelley. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
Lee, Paul. “Shelley’s Bicentennial Commemorative Special: Review of Shelley’s
Literary Works.” (Korean) Poetry Monthly Shimunhak 252. Seoul: Shimunhaksa,
1992. 112-134.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (The 1818 Text). Ed. James
Rieger; Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith; New York: St. Martin’s P, 1992.

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Personal Notes

Dear my English Professor Calabrese, I sincerely write this personal notes to tell you that I have been participated in your class with a “great anticipation” and “admiration” as a senior student of English major. This English 340 class is for the last subject to receive a second bachelor’s degree in English. (I received my first bachelor’s degree of Electrical Engineering in 1975 and presently, am working at California State Department of Transportation, “Caltrans,” as an electrical engineer since 1981.) Finally, I am graduating English major this year! I plan to pursue Master in Fine Art (Poetry) program with Professor Timothy Steele.
Also, with this essay, Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Prometheus, I submit some copies of my works: “Shelley’s Bicentennial Commemorative Special: Review of Shelley’s Literary Works” in Poetry Monthly (Korean version published in 1992, in Seoul, Korea), which I used for “Work Cited” and two poems translated into French and published in 1995, in Paris-- “Memoire” and “A Propos Du Volcan” in JALONS.


- Your student Paul “Poong Ho” Lee