Influence of The Metamorphoses and Paradise Lost in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Influence of The Metamorphoses and Paradise Lost in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein, possibly Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's most well-known work, is

considered by some to be the greatest Gothic Romance Novel. Due to her marriage to

Percy Bysshe Shelley and close friendship with other prolific Romantic authors and poets,

namely Lord Byron, Shelley's works permeate with Romantic themes and references. Also

present in Frankenstein are obvious allusions to The Metamorphoses by Ovid and Paradise

Lost by Milton. Shelley had been studying these two novels during her stay at Lord

Byron's villa, and at the time she was composing Frankenstein. The use of these references

and themes prove that Mary Shelley was a product of her environment and time.

Robert Walton, the arctic explorer whose letters create the framework for this epistlary

novel, opens the reader to the concept of the "Romantic Quest," the journey for the

unknown. "I am already far north of London," he writes to his sister, "... [and] I feel a

cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks...which fills me with delight...This breeze,

which has travelled from regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of

those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent

and vivid" (Shelley 15). These sentiments will be later echoed by Dr. Frankenstein when

he experiments with the unknown to create his creature/monster. The quest of the

Romantic can take many forms, from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to

Byron's "Childe Harold," both of which are poems alluded to during the course of the

novel, along with ann abundance of allusions to William Wordsworth's poetry.

Walton ends his second letter ...

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...e novel and stated, "Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any

other human being... I was wretched, helpless and alone. Many times I considered Satan

the fitter emblem of my condition." Other echoes of Paradise Lost are Frankenstein hopes

to be the source of a new species, but ironicalle his creature evolves into a self-

acknowledged Satan who swears eternal revenge and was upon his creator and all the

human race. The moster refllects that hell is an internal condition which is produced and

incensed through loneliness. His only salvation is the creation of a mate, his Eve. Also, in

the latter part of hte book, Frankenstein refers to the monster in terms used in Paradise

Lost; the fiend, the demon, the devil, annd adversary. Both master and creature are torn

by their internal conflicts from misapplied knowledge and their sense of isolation.