Why Prometheus?

Why, you may ask, “the modern Prometheus”? Prometheus gave fire to mankind, of course, but I think that’s not what was uppermost in Mary Shelley’s mind. As well as Prometheus Pyrphoros, Ovid tells us, there is Prometheus Plasticator: the creator of (male) humankind. It’s a Roman revision of the myth, but one that makes sense as it provides him with a personal motive for siding with Man against the gods. So it sharpens the story and deepens character too. I guess that makes Ovid the Russell T Davies of his day.

It was left to Hephaestus to create woman (the infamous Pandora, designed by Zeus as a punishment for mankind) and a little echo of that myth too survives in Frankenstein, though the female creature has not been well treated in any of the versions of the story. In the original novel she never even gets to be animated:

…on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the dæmon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the fulfillment of my promise.

As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise to create another like him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.

In the 1935 movie, she rises from the slab and enjoys a very brief bad hair day before the spurned monster blows up Frankenstein’s castle with them both inside it: “You stay. We belong dead.” (Oh yeah, in the movies the poor chap talks like the Hulk or Simple Jack. No erudite references to Paradise Lost for him there.) And in the recent stage adaptation (pictured) by Nick Dear, she comes to life but then Victor Frankenstein kills her out of spite when he realizes he will never be able to appreciate the sublime sentiments of love that his creation, noble savage that he is, is able to express.

And in my new interactive version? There, as you’d expect, the creation of the female monster is a major part of the plot, and there are several ways it can play out. But if you think I’m going to discuss them here… I’m tempted, but it’d take a dozen blog posts. You’ll have to buy the book to find out.