Frankenstein's monster was inherently something outside of nature. His very creation was a taboo. The reason Frankenstein rejected the creature was that at the moment he saw into the creature's eyes for the first time, he was struck by the blind horror of what he had done. The communion of souls that takes place when you look into someone's eyes was perverted and evil.

This is not to say that the monster was necessarily evil. He was simply what he was - a creature that was far more able and far more powerful than humanity. He was a creature created outside of nature, and could not possibly find a place within it and its morality. That's why he moved so easily into murder and violence, and why he ultimately fled to the Arctic wastes. Given a mate, his race would have destroyed ours. That's why Doctor F. balked at creating one.

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Except that your opposition to corpore-metal's argument is a shabby one. Shelley was absolutely informed by her husband's rabid atheism and the theory they both shared that God had potentially created and then abandoned humanity.

The idea is fully supported in the book and has been considered legitimate interpretation of the novel for quite some time now, your protests to its "accuracy" notwithstanding.

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Shelley himself was an Atheist, and published the pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism". Mary Shelley's father was well known atheist philosopher William Godwin, so I very much doubt that either Shelley regarded God as having created, and then abandoned mankind. That's not actually what atheism is about. AT ALL. In fact, his Prometheus Unbound was simply about the fact that man's mind and creative spirit could only be fully realized when wedded to nature (Prometheus is wed to Asia, the goddess of Nature), and that the God Jupiter simply exists to enslave us. There's no God in Shelley's view of the world. In Mary Shelley's either. The only thing they may have shared is an affinity for the Gnostic creation myth, where the creator-demon demiurge makes mankind imperfectly by trapping souls within a poorly made material world. And even that wasn't a genuine religious belief, but a way of exploding the idea that God is necessary to human spiritual perfection.

And as to that article you linked me to. You do realize that the thing you linked to actually doesn't support that argument much at all? Maybe you should actually read the things that you link to? Page 127 in particular. The monster DOES accord in many places with Rousseau's "natural man". But the problem is that he is NOT a man, and thus has no place in man's world. He can live a blessed life in solitude, but that's not his place as a creature. As a Romantic being, he requires society and interaction, but he is a creature from a different species, wholly unable to integrate himself into humanity. He does share elements of humanity, which is what makes the story tragic, but he also reflects the murderous, terrifying elements of humanity. He leaps directly to murder and chaos, he blames everything in his world on the fact of his creation, which is senseless and stupid. He's a murderous unnatural creature and his creation also removes Frankenstein himself from man's nature. Together the two of them form a sort of unique dyad, and as with all sualities, they reflect a lot of what you want to see in them - man vs. god, the poet's vision of the divine nature vs. the animal nature in man.... it's able to be read in many ways, which makes it a powerful symbol.

The title "The Modern Prometheus" is very apt, as Frankenstein himself acts as the old greek titan here, giving life to a new people. But Prometheus's sin was the same as Frankenstein's - he was warned that should man possess fire, he would grow to rival and supplant the gods. For his acts he was chained and enslaved, and indeed Zeus turned out to be right - humanity DID supplant the Gods for all intents and purposes. And this monster would have supplanted humanity.

Anyhow - I could go on for a long time, but suffice to say my arguments are certainly NOT shabby. I've spent a lot of time and effort thinking them out, so don't call me out on something I know about unless you're fully prepared, because I certainly am. I'm not just speaking out of my ass, like you are. I can actually back shit up.

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