Birdyline Book Blog

I’ve written before about the theme of responsibility in creation as seen in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and today I want to go a step further by pointing out the parallels between the aforementioned novel and another culturally significant literary work- John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The original paper I wrote on this was ten pages long, so the entirety of my research and analysis is not present. I hope that this abridged version will still communicate the scope of what I found! (PSA: a very common mistake made is the confusion between Frankenstein and the monster. Please note that Frankenstein is the doctor who has created what will be referred to as the monster, and is not the monster himself.)

The idea of assigning blame to the creator as someone who holds fault in his creation’s later actions is a more accusatory elaboration on Milton’s ideas of predestination and it likely came from Shelley’s religious beliefs. Her husband was a famously outspoken atheist, even writing a pamphlet in college titled “The Necessity of Atheism” that led to his expulsion. Mary, on the other hand, was not so open with her religious beliefs. Her ideas may have been shaped by her father who gained much of his notability from attacking the Christian church. Regardless, she spoke less publicly about her faith and instead her ideas can best be gleaned from her work. 

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is specifically addressed within Frankenstein, and Shelley toys with its views on what it means to be a human as well as power balances. By contrasting the monster against the two primary characters of Milton’s Paradise Lost, an argument could be made that Shelley is refuting the structure of self that Milton creates. That is, among fallen creatures one can only be a ‘Lucifer’ or an ‘Adam.’ In “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Milton’s Monstrous Myth” on behalf of the University of California Press, John B. Lamb writes, “The monster and his text, or the monster as text, are engendered in a world in which the process of naming relies upon a culturally predetermined system of signs: Adam and Lucifer, the only two constructs for the fallen male in Milton’s cosmology.” 

Frankenstein’s monster first recognizes and then bemoans his alterity by recognizing the parallels between himself and Lucifer in addition to the differences between himself and Adam. “Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature…” Shelley denounces the idea that the monster is inherently evil by assigning the blame to his maker. The monster claims that he should have been good- he would have been good. “Remember, that I am your creature; I ought to be thy Adam but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” (Shelley, 69) Indeed, the monster could have been like Adam. He is the first of his kind, but none of his similarities matter in light of the fact that Frankenstein rejects him. 

Another contrast is found in the concept of original sin. Milton’s Paradise Lost acknowledges Adam’s sin as “felix culpa,” an evil that leads ultimately to good. This is another way in which the monster is more similar to Lucifer. Both betray the moral code that their creator expects, and both having been predetermined as evil, there is no “felix culpa” to be found for them. Even by human standards, the monster has not been given a chance to attain innocence. “The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned,” the monster tells Frankenstein on the mountain before further emphasizing the double standard between them, “You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” (Shelley, 69)

It is easy to focus on alterity specifically regarding the doctor and the monster, but Shelley does not neglect to compare Milton’s epic to the third first-person narrator, Walton. Walton’s expedition to the frozen pole is an easily forgotten sub-plot, but it symbolizes the description of a frozen continent as described in book 11 of Paradise Lost. “Far off from these a slow and silent stream/Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/Her wat’ry Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,/Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain./Beyond this flood a frozen Continent/Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms/Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land/Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems/Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice.” (Milton, bk. 11) John B. Lamb notes “The Miltonic subtext of Walton’s voyage suggests that his journey to the ‘frozen continent’ is an attempt to pass both through and beyond Lethe: to forget ‘his former state and being’ and to inscribe a new and more heroic version of himself-to rename himself ‘God’ or ‘Adam.’” Walton’s expedition ends in miserable failure. He writes to his sister that he has “consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision: I come back ignorant and disappointed.” (Shelley, 160) He has unsuccessfully changed his classification, being bested by nature both literally and metaphorically. Meanwhile, Frankenstein dies on the ship, his own quest unsatisfied.

My Critical Analysis:

Despite repeatedly contradicting Milton’s ideas, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley does not fully reject them. Shelley makes no claim that Frankenstein’s monster should or even could be granted classification as an ‘Adam.’ The monster and Walton are both unable to become more than what they already are. Walton is bound by his human nature, physically incapable of surviving the conditions he thought would bring him to “…the region of beauty and delight… a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.” (Shelley, 1) The monster, too, can’t fit into human society even if he resembled a human, which he does not. “Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as a man.” (Shelley, 85) The monster, like Walton, briefly believes that if he learns enough he will be able to change his fate. “Having mastered the ‘godlike science’ of language, the monster is betrayed into the belief that he is the master of his history and of his world, that he can shape and control the self he would become,” Lamb adds. Frankenstein gets the closest to becoming something higher in the hierarchy than he had been. Creating life from something that is not life is an exclusively divine ability, but at best Frankenstein is a failed god, because while he manages to create something, his own inferior position in the divine hierarchy prevents him from creating anything good. 

Not even Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s own definition of humanity can redeem the monster from his subaltern state. Frankenstein notes that what sets humans apart from animals is their emotions, and that this is not always to their advantage. “Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute… If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows…” (Shelley, 67) Later on the monster expresses that this has been his experience- he has felt beyond simple hunger and thirst, and he too expresses his dismay. “Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst and heat!” (Shelley, 85) The similarities between these two exclamations is certainly not a coincidence, so while Shelley could have used this to suggest the monster was in fact deserving of the same place on the hierarchy as Frankenstein, she did not. 

The monster, as a creation, is naturally subservient to his creator as he himself notes. “I am thy creature and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king…” (Shelley, 69) Not only does the monster recognize the doctor as above himself, but the other members of the doctor’s race. He describes how he looks at the humans he observes as “superior beings…” (Shelley, 81) In the traditional Christian order of the world, humans are already subservient to God. Therefore it follows that as the monster is under his own creator who is, again, already at a lower position of the hierarchy, the monster is in fact a subaltern taking his position at the bottom of the social order- under humans who are under God. Furthermore, Shelley does not challenge John Milton’s portrayal of God as a just creator, because she highlights only the failures of a human. Leslie Tannenbaum writes for the Keats-Shelley Journal that “The novel’s allusions to Paradise Lost work ironically to contrast with Milton’s more loving and responsible Divinity.”

It is briefly suggested that human social bonds set them apart from other specieses, as the monster tells us he learns about “all the various relationships which bind one human to another in mutual bonds.” (Shelley, 86) He regrets that he does not have this sort of community, but as Doctor Frankenstein decides, the harm of creating another of these inferior beings outweighs the possibility of redemption for the one and only living member of his race. 

The only key difference between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s social order and John Milton’s is that Shelley dares assign blame to the creator. Mary Shelley suggests that Victor’s refusal to establish important connections with his creature is not only morally wrong but also partially accountable for the creature’s behavior. Victor is quoted as being overwhelmed with disgust towards the “unfortunate being whom he had painstakingly constructed” (Shelley, 35) and dismisses it. However, Victor was fully aware of what he was doing the entire time he worked on the creature and could have stopped at any point. Therefore while the novel acknowledges the monster as inferior and the creation of a second monster is labeled as a horrible idea, the blame for the monster’s actions rests on his maker entirely. Victor’s disgust led to him neglecting his responsibilities, which ultimately resulted in the monster committing crimes. This is an idea that John Milton would not have dared to present in his poem, but it is worth noting that Dr. Frankenstein is not a divine being. He has stepped out of his place as creation to play the role of creator, and now evil has inevitably come from it. 

Conclusion

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley incorporated various parts of herself in Frankenstein that wouldn’t be seen as autobiographical without a previous understanding of her life. Character traits like the lack of a mother in all three of her first-person narrators echo her own loss of her mother. She also shares a coping mechanism with the namesake of the novel. Shelley, like Frankenstein, repeatedly chose to travel to various destinations when stressed. Even the inspiration for the novel came from urban legends she heard while travelling and the places she went to visit. It follows that her religious ideas would be mixed into the book as well. 

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, in response to Miltonic ideas, presents a hierarchy for all living beings. God is unchallenged as divine creator. Frankenstein achieves creator status but falls short of divinity. Walton, as human creation, fails entirely to elevate his status, instead returning “ignorant” from his ambitious voyage. The monster sits at the very bottom of the hierarchy, being the creation of creation. Throughout all of this the key warning is clear- to understand your limits according to your place in the world. Stepping outside of natural laws results in consequences, and that is how Shelley manages to establish the monster as the lowest of the low while also being sympathetic- because the monster is the consequence.

The monster is not only in a tier lower than humanity- he is in a tier that Shelley argues should have never existed at all. While it is unfortunate for the monster who suffers through loneliness and countless rejections, the sin lies with Frankenstein who created a new ‘Lucifer.’

Here is a link to my first article about Shelley’s novel, which is simpler and focuses only on the classic book itself: Frankenstein and the Responsibility of Creation – Birdyline Book Blog