I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou
drivest from joy for no misdeed
The Creature delivers a sudden telescoping and radical interpretation of
the mythic text that stands behind this entire narrative, Milton's
Paradise Lost. The point behind the Creature's distinction is
that Adam fell by knowingly commiting a sinful deed, whereas Satan, in
contrast, in this reading was intended to fall from heaven as an intrinsic
part of the conception of God's new creation. Most readers of Milton's
epic would not countenance a reading of Satan as more sinned against than
sinning, but it is the general interpretation that Percy Bysshe Shelley
offers in the famous passage of his
"Defence of Poetry" devoted to the poem. Since that document dates from
1821, five years after the
beginning of Frankenstein, however well it glosses the antagonism
of Victor and his Creature, it ought not to be read in retrospect as
explaining this usage. One might, however, wish to argue that the
representation in Mary Shelley's novel either influenced her husband's
interpretation or was worked out as a reading in tandem with him. Whatever
the case, the emphasis is unmistakeable here, that the Creature sees
himself as like Satan, "irrevocably excluded" from bliss, which --
although Milton (in Satan's soliloquy on Mount Niphates, IV.32ff.) tries to finesse the issue --
is how received theology forced him to represent the fallen archangel in
his epic.
