Frankenstein and the Miltonic Creation of Evil

David Soyka
Extrapolation, 33:2 (Summer 1992), 166-77
[{166}]The arrogant mad scientist whose creation turns against him is a standard science
fiction subject, if not clich, that Isaac Asimov somewhat derisively termed "the
Frankenstein Complex" (I, Robot106)1. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is regarded as the
genesis of science fiction because it speculates on the consequences of a scientific
experiment gone amok. While we tend to think of this as a twentieth-century phenomenon
framed in the context of the post-Hiroshima nuclear genie irrevocably let out of the lamp,
Shelley, nearly three centuries ago, was echoing her mother's sentiment that "Nature, or to
speak with strict propriety, God, has made all things right; but man has sought him out
many inventions to mar the work" (Wollstonecraft 113). This notion can in turn be traced
to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's opening lines in Emile, "Everything is good as leaves the
hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man. . . . He turns
everything upside clown; he disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters" (37).
However, while it is certainly a major dimension of the work, it would be mistaken to
view Frankenstein just as a parable of humanity's foolishness in tampering with Nature
without due regard for the potential consequences. In contrast to her mother's
Rousseauistic view that mankind is the source of troubles in the world, Mary Shelley also
aims at a higher target. As William Walling points out, Victor Frankenstein is portrayed as
"a version of the 'Creator' -- of God Himself" (59). Victor is, however, a considerably
flawed creator whose irresponsibility and short sightedness produce a creature who can't
help but become evil. In casting her novel with the Miltonic theme of the created's rejection
of the creator, and the earthly havoc this rejection causes, Shelley suggests through her
characterization of Victor Frankenstein that it is God's hubris {167} and subsequent lack of
interest in His Creation that lays the groundwork for human wickedness.
Evil in Frankenstein is grounded in the concept of creation: Victor Frankenstein's dual
metamorphic role is as both God the Creator and Satan the destroyer of God's creation. His
Monster fills the multiple roles of fallen Adam and Satan avenging the God who cast him
out, as well as Job-like victim of circumstances beyond individual control. Finally, Mary
Shelley, as the creator of a novel about the creation of evil, is possibly commenting upon
her own creation (her mother having died giving birth to Mary) as well as ill-fated
creations of her own (one of her daughters died soon after birth; Percy Bysshe Shelley's
first wife, Harriet, drowned herself after he left her for Mary; and more tragedies follow
after the novel is first published).
The source for the creation of evil is aptly summarized in the novel's subtitle, "The Modern
Prometheus." In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the creator and protector of mankind,
and is perhaps best known for stealing fire from the gods to give to humans, a "crime" for
which Zeus punishes him with eternal torment. As Anne Mellor notes, Mary Shelley was
familiar with the Prometheus myth after having readOvid's Metamorphoses in 1815 (71).
Moreover, the Romantic poets latched onto the figure of Prometheus as noble rebel and

suffering savior of mankind not only in their poetry, but their image of themselves as
poets/creators. Mary Shelley's most intimate link to these self-styled Prometheans was, of
course, with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, author of Prometheus Unbound, who not
only serves as a model for Victor Frankenstein but was also heavily involved in editing the
novel's first edition.2
Beyond these obvious associations between Frankenstein and Promethean mythology,
however, it is important to consider the significance of the name itself. Prometheus means
"forethought," and forethought is decidedly lacking throughout the novel. Victor
Frankenstein is seemingly oblivious to the moral implications of creating the Monster, the
possible repercussions of abandoning his creature immediately after "birth," or the
meaning of the Monster's warning that "I shall be with you on your wedding night."
The modern Prometheus, then, is the unthinking creator who fails, whether intentionally
or unconsciously, to be responsible for his creation, thereby creating evil. But the
responsibilities of creation go beyond issues related to modern science and technology, or
even, to accept another reading of the novel, modern man's psychological conflicts. The
underlying theme is rooted in Miltonic questions about the first creation. If God is the
creator of all things, why did He create evil to ruin his creation? And if, despite being the
prime source of all things, the creator is somehow excused from creating evil, why does He
continue to allow {168} evil to be inflicted upon His creation? Does God truly play dice
with the universe? And if he does, is He totally shed of any responsibility when the dice
come up "snake eyes"? Certainly Victor Frankenstein's plays a poor game of dice. An
examination of Shelley's portrayal of Victor's character and motivations reveals her
thoughts about this Miltonic dilemma.
After years of scientific study and experimentation, Victor finally realizes his dream of
creating life, only to desert the horrid result of his work until it conveniently walks away,
although far from not being seen again. The events that follow are best characterized by
Paul Sherwin in observing that "Mary Shelley might well have titled her novel One
Catastrophe after Another" (138).
The cause of these catastrophes -- the various murders of Frankenstein's best friend and
family members, as well as the Monster's own calamitous predicament -- depends on
whether the reader accepts the Monster as a literally created being or as a double
personality Frankenstein assumes to act out his destructive impulses. In arguing that
Frankenstein and his monster are two sides of the same coin, Mary Thornburg asks,
And why did Mary Shelley, who painstakingly edited and corrected a number of times,
before the 1831 edition was issued, choose to leave such apparent incongruities, especially
those that might easily have been corrected, open to criticism of her readers -- if not to
suggest that Victor and Monster were . . . actually one person who at different times
exhibited two different modes of consciousness, who saw himself as two separate beings?
(91)
Shelley certainly plants the psychological seeds of disturbance by having Victor dream
his "kiss of death" with Elizabeth immediately after the Monster comes to life. And it is that

very same Monster who murders Elizabeth (again, without any witness but Frankenstein),
thereby resolving Victor's incestuous fears.3 Equally important to consider is that the
Monster is never named, suggesting it is just another aspect of Victor. Indeed, as Muriel
Spark points out, this leads to the "common mistake of naming the Monster
'Frankenstein'" (16). This mistake is a highly perceptive one, though, in recognizing the
Monster as the evil reflection of the "good" Victor Frankenstein.
The persuasiveness of these arguments notwithstanding, I think it is misreading Shelley's
intentions as well as the enduring power of her novel to rationalize away the Monster as a
mere psychotic disturbance. To see the Monster in some sense as Victor's double, and that
the evil he commits is Victor's evil, is crucial to comprehending the novel. Just as crucial is
understanding the Monster as a separate being created by Frankenstein, and that Victor's
personality is imparted to his creation in much the same way as God creates man in His
own image. Certainly Shelley {169} provides us with enough evidence to support this
interpretation, beginning with the epigraph from Paradise Lost:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay,
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee,
From darkness to promote me? (10.743-45)
That the Monster was, as Frankenstein claims, actually animated from lifeless matter
seems supported by the way in which the novel is told, as a series of letters from the
explorer Robert Walton recounting the rescued Frankenstein's tale. When Walton meets
the Monster immediately after Frankenstein dies, any doubt Walton, or the reader, may
have had about whether the creature actually existed would appear dispelled. Of course,
the possibility exists that neither Frankenstein nor the Monster ever existed, and that this
is Walton's own excuse to justify abandoning the quest of his polar expedition. Or, if we
believe Frankenstein is real, it may be significant that the one independent verification of
the Monster occurs only after Frankenstein has died. Shelley, as did all artists of the
period, believed in dreams as a sort of alternative, a sometimes overlapping reality in
which their "double" or "doppelgnger" participated. Indeed, in her own introduction
to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley says the idea for the novel came from "the grim terrors of
my waking dream" (xxv). It might follow, then, for the evil doppelgnger of a split
personality to have an existence of its own upon the demise of the good half. But such
explanations are a bit too pat, the kind of trick for which simplistic science fiction earned
the genre its poor reputation. Why Frankenstein is upheld as a progenitor of science
fiction, and hence due respectability, is precisely because of its literary richness. It is
doubtful if Shelley went to all the trouble of creating the complex layers
of Frankenstein simply to tag on a gimmicky ending.
Nor can it be argued that Frankenstein's Monster could never have existed, and must
therefore be Victor's Mr. Hyde personality, because the scientific principles behind the
Monster's creation are fantastically impossible. So it may appear from the vantage point of
twentieth-century knowledge that Shelley's science is, as James Rieger describes it,
"switched-on magic, souped-up alchemy" (xxvii). However, Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface
to his wife's novel notes that "this fiction . . . has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin and some

of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence" (6). As Samuel

Holmes Vasbinder points out, Shelley was familiar with experiments of her time in which
corpses were convulsed with electric current, the same force that is used to animate the
Monster, and Victor is portrayed as "educated in this scientific philosophy at a leading
university" (84).4
{170} If, as Vasbinder persuasively argues, the Monster's portrayal is meant as an actual
creature whose invention was at least theoretically supportable by scientific experiments
conducted during Shelley's time, this raises certain difficulties about narrative logic. How
is it, for example, that an eight-feet-tall, hideous Monster is able to ramble about Europe
without ever being seen by anyone, at least by anyone who lives, other than Victor
Frankenstein? For that matter, we have to wonder what Frankenstein was looking at for
the two years he spent in his laboratory assembling this massive being, using body parts
not as originally intended by the manufacturer, when all of a sudden one dreary November
evening he finds himself repulsed by his handiwork?
We can still agree with Thornburg that Mary Shelley deliberately left such logical
inconsistencies in the 1831 edition without reaching her conclusion that Frankenstein and
the Monster must be the same entity. The existence of God, and particularly the Bible, in
which His existence is supposedly proven, resounds with logical inconsistencies. That the
Monster is known by his deeds, and not by his appearance, sounds fetchingly similar to
arguments advanced not only for God, but the Devil. When the reader asks whether the
Monster is real or not, Shelley is forcing consideration of the same issue of whether God is
real or not. Whether or not we consider the Monster evil also depends on our conception of
whether evil emanates from God, from Satan, or from ourselves.
Shelley suggests we and not our stars are to blame, but without quite letting God off the
hook. It strikes us as incomprehensible that Frankenstein so readily abandons his creation
after entertaining fantasies that a "new species would bless me as its creator and source;
many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father should claim the
gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs" (39). We might at first think
of Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, but this doesn't
quite fit since God does not entirely abandon humanity to its own devices, as Frankenstein
does the Monster. The analogy here is not to the Bible but to Milton's Paradise
Lost depiction of God as disappointed in His creation of Satan. Instead of admonishing
Satan, or somehow metaphysically remedying Satan's inclination towards pride, God casts
Satan out forever from His domain. Similarly, Frankenstein's disappointment in his
creation causes him to cast out the Monster, who he continually refers to thereafter as
"fiend" or "devil." One reason why the reader can sympathize with Frankenstein's Monster
as well as with Milton's Satan is that despite whatever evil they cause, they have been
abandoned, seemingly without substantial cause, by their respective creators. In both
cases, we have to ask, without necessarily receiving a satisfactory answer, how these two
{171} expulsions can possibly take place without any consideration of what further
complications may be caused. And, in both cases, the cast-out doesn't take his revenge
directly upon the Creator, the cause of his predicament, but upon the innocent beings
important to the Creator (Adam and Eve; Victor's close friend and relations).

Why an Omniscient Being would purposely create circumstances to create evil, but in such
a way to allow apologists such as Milton to provide excuses for providential behavior, is a
theological question that readers of Milton and apologists for Christianity argued over at
least up to Shelley's time.5 That Victor Frankenstein, a rational man of science, would be so
unthinking is not really as inexplicable. Even just up to Mary Shelley's time, the pages of
history are more than filled with the follies of supposedly rational men. As Mellor points
out, "Writing during the early years of Britain's industrial revolution and the age of
Empire, Mary Shelley was aware of the damaging consequences of a scientific, objective,
alienated view of both nature and human labor" (114). Moreover, as Donald M. Hassler
observes, "The end of the eighteenth century also witnessed the diabolical transformation
of progress into the terror of the French Revolution" (75).
By devoting a major portion of the novel to the Monster's self-education with the De Lacey
family, Mary Shelley not only provides additional evidence for viewing the Monster as a
distinct entity, but also offers nontheological reasons for the evil rooted in social structure
and prejudices. It is here where the Monster's cruel education in human follies takes place:
I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and
unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these
acquisitions; but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a
vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for profits of the chosen few. And what
was I? (115)
It is in this part of the novel where Mary Shelley most echoes her mother and namesake,
Mary Wollstonecraft, in decrying social inequity. Compare the Monster's words quoted
above with Wollstonecraft's complaint in Vindication of the Rights of Women:
For whilst rank and titles are held of the utmost importance, before which Genius "must
hide its diminished head", it is, with few exceptions, very unfortunate for a nation when a
man of abilities, without rank or property, pushes himself forward to notice. (92-93)
Consider what does happen to the Monster when he pushes himself forward to notice:
{172} Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me. Agatha fainted;
and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward,
and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport
of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. (131)
The De Laceys' "horror and consternation" stems from the Monster's appearance, which
the Monster himself is aware of as "a figure hideously deformed and loathsome" (115).
Felix's response is all-too human in equating the grotesque, or even the merely different,
with evil. This simplistic reasoning, based on visceral reaction grounded in social
conditioning rather than logical consideration, overrides any need to determine the
Monster's origins or motivations, just as much of history has been cluttered with conflicts
based upon unfounded presumptions about surface appearances. Even regarding
differences with the opposite sex, "Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify
prejudices" (Wollstonecraft 92).

The Monster's rejection by the De Laceys, whom he has come to love from a distance, is
fundamental to understanding how he becomes evil. Up until this point, the Monster has
shown no natural proclivity towards evil. Indeed, his actions have been genuinely
altruistic, having surreptitiously stocked the cottagers' wood pile and "performed those
offices that I had seen done by Felix" (110). In return, the Monster has a place to live and
conduct his self-education by observing the cottagers, for whom his affection increases as if
he were an orphan finally finding a family to call his own.
Of course, the supplemental reading list Mary Shelley provides the Monster
includes Paradise Lost, knowledge of which begins the Monster's expulsion from his own
paradise, much as the intellectual discoveries of any maturing child bring the realization
that life is much more complicated than the exclusive purpose of satisfying basic individual
needs. The Monster's identification with Adam -- and, by extension, Victor Frankenstein's
identification with God -- initiates the process by which their mutual fall takes place.
It is interesting to note that the Monster does not wreak vengeance upon the De Laceys
who cruelly reject him, but upon his creator, who makes it impossible for the De Laceys to
accept him. Estrangement from family, the basic social unit, figures throughout the novel
as a condition that festers evil. The Monster turns to evil after being cast out from his
"family." Frankenstein has caused evil, in part, because, "In his obsession, Frankenstein
has cut himself off from his family and from the human community; in his reaction to that
obsession, Frankenstein cuts himself off from his creation" (Levine 92). And after
Frankenstein further refuses his God-like responsibility to the Monster by creating a {173}
companion, the Monster makes Frankenstein's isolation from family quite literal with the
murders of Clerval and Elizabeth, leading to another lonely obsessional quest, this time
one of destruction rather than creation.
Paradoxically, it is Frankenstein's refusal to create again that compounds the original evil
of creation. Rather than being heralded as the founder of a new species, Frankenstein now
fears "that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness has not hesitated to
buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race" (163). In
other words, Frankenstein now sees himself as Satan rather than God. Such insight comes
curiously late to Frankenstein. Indeed, his refusal to animate a companion, after being well
on his way to completing the work, for fear of unleashing a plague of monsters upon the
earth is yet another example of how Shelley portrays seeming rationality obscuring darker
motivations. True, the Monster has shown his potential for evil in killing young William
and implicating Justine to hang for the murder. Still, his request is not an unreasonable
one. He has promised to "fly from the habitations of man" if provided with a companion, a
family of his own comprised of his own kind, for "If I have no ties and affections, hatred
and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I
shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant" (143). As a scientist
presumably aware of basic biological principles, it is quite unbelievable that Frankenstein
is really afraid the Monster and his companion will foster children. All he has to do is leave
the uterus out of the mixing directions!

Here again, Frankenstein's lack of foresight, coupled with his male egocentrism, fails to
anticipate the evil he lets loose by not owning up to his responsibility to alleviate his
creation's loneliness, a reaction that would normally be instinctive in any good mother.
This is the underlying reason why we need to see the Monster as an actual creature. As
Mellor observes, "From a feminist viewpoint, Frankenstein is a book about what happens
when a man tries to have a baby without a woman" (40); he fails to properly nurture the
creature's emotional and moral development, and thereby the sins of the father are visited
upon the son.
In terms of the Paradise Lost motif, the Monster is transformed from innocent Adam, a
victim of other's actions (Eve's disobedience; the De Laceys' revulsion), to Satan avenging
his predicament.6 One other Biblical character that might be considered outside
of Paradise Lost, however, is Job, with whose loathsome appearance of "sore boils" the
Monster shares in being singled out from mankind. It is also interesting to note that
"modern writers have often compared Job to the Greek Prometheus, who challenged the
reign of the Gods" (Gordis 227). Thus, {174} the Monster as a Job figure challenges his
creator to be responsible for his creation.
The most striking similarity between the Monster and Job is the inexplicableness, to their
understanding, of their respective plights, for which they come to curse their coming into
the world. Both are innocents. And both are being tested, though there is no actual wager
on the Monster's virtue. But while Job is being tested by supernatural forces, the Monster
is being tested by cruelties inherent in society. Perhaps this is why the Monster fails his test
and turns to evil. Job at least has God, however enigmatic, to turn to; the Monster has only
a man pretending to be God as a last resource.
Robert Gordis might just as easily have been referring to the Monster's request of
Frankenstein in writing that "Job wants only to find God, so that he may set forth his case
without fear and receive an answer . . . God must surely know of his basic innocence" (96).
The Monster is equally sure of his innocence, despite his crimes of passion, and throws
himself at the mercy of his creator, only to be denied. Job, at least, is recompensed with
greater possessions and wisdom for his misery, a comforting parable for those who ask to
understand why they must suffer in the world. The Monster is condemned to suffer for the
rest of his existence without hope of reward, a prospect faced by those who fail to find
solace, or signs of its truth, in the parable. Once again, to reject the Monster's existence as
simply psychological projection is to miss what Mary Shelley is saying about the ethical
quandaries of creation.
Finally, in examining the notion of creating evil, it is ultimately necessary to examine Mary
Shelley's own role as the creator of a novel about creation. Certainly, much can be said
about how Mary's own lifeis weaved into the story line. The most notable parallel is that
she was abandoned by her mother (though certainly not by willful irresponsibility; Mary
Wollstonecraft died from complications in giving birth to Mary), a creator who, not
incidentally, was publicly denounced as a monster for the "evil" of her unconventional
lifestyle and advocacy of women's rights. Then there is the manifold guilt of possibly being
the cause not only for her mother's death, but also for Percy Shelley's estranged wife's

suicide by drowning and, more importantly, her own first failure at creation in the death of
her baby daughter. "A week later, she dreamed two nights in a row about her dead
daughter: 'Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that
we rubbed it before the fire and it lived'" (Mellor 32). After the book is published, there
follows the eerie tragic deaths of her son William, whose namesake in the novel is
murdered by the Monster, and husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet advocate of the
Prometheus myth whose scientific interests and pen name of Victor serve as the model for
Frankenstein.
{175} Her relationship with Percy Shelley, and their extended family of lovers and friends,
also must have played a part in her perception of destructive familial relationships. Mellor
points to Percy Shelley's unresolved Oedipal complex compounded with an erotic
attraction to his sister Elizabeth as the source for Frankenstein's death-wish dream, to be
fulfilled in reality by the Monster, of his "situational" sister Elizabeth. Mary Shelley may
have put more of herself in this plot than it might first seem. She might just as easily have
named the character of Elizabeth after her own stepsister, Jane, whose affair with Percy
may have made Mary wish her dead. Perhaps Mary got her imaginary revenge in another
form, though. Jane, whose continual presence was a constant irritation to Mary, was also
known as Claire, which could have been transformed into Victor Frankenstein's equally
constant, but ill-fated, companion, Clerval.
Speculating about who might be whom makes for great fun, but I suspect the overruling
influence of Mary's personality that shapes the novel is her overwhelming sense of
loneliness. As Elizabeth Nitchie notes, "That this monstrous being could be imagined by a
young girl is due partly to the fact that he is the symbol of her own loneliness" (17).
Permanently separated from an uncaring creator, the Monster's loneliness summarizes
humanity's alienation from both the natural and cosmic worlds.
Since Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein's Monster" has become such a commonplace
expression, with a legion of authors indebted to her for inspiring their own imaginative
works, it is easy to lose sight of the originality of Mary Shelley's invention. As Mellor points
out, "All other creation myths . . . depend on female participation or some form of divine
interpretation. . . . The idea of an entirely man-made monster is Mary Shelley's own" (38).
The significance of this is best illustrated by Northrop Frye's observation that the "creation
myth suggests planning and intelligence, and planning and intelligence suggest a creator
who could have originally produced only a perfect or model world. . . . To account for the
contrast between the model world that such a God must have made and the actual world
that we find ourselves in now, a myth of human 'fall' must be added, an alienation myth
which expresses the present human condition but does not attach it directly to the work of
creation" (33; emphasis added).
Mary Shelley's unique literary achievement is that she creates a myth in which evil is not
separate from creation, but is intertwinably fated with the act. Man creates evil because he
lacks foresight to anticipate the outcomes of creation. Therefore, if God exists, and if evil
has entered into God's Creation, then it must be through some similar shortcoming of God.

This raises the question of whether a fallible God, if there is one at all, deserves to be
worshipped. And, if not, wherein lies salvation?
{176} The novel's conclusion suggests that if there is any hope of salvation, it is through
humanity's, not God's, doing. Frankenstein and his Monster have self-destructed, the
latter, ironically, by fire, Prometheus's gift to humanity. Robert Walton, though not
without regret, is persuaded to abandon his own Promethean quest in recognition of the
potential harm he might inflict upon his fellow beings. Despite the shortcomings of God's
Creation, Mary Shelley puts faith in humanity's ability to learn from its mistakes, that
individual will and foresight allow for at least the chance that evil need not be inevitable.
That as we enter the twenty-first century we continue to live with the Frankenstein
Complex hints that this viewpoint may be overly optimistic.