Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

             Above all, Mary Shelley associated her modern Prometheus with.
             Percy Shelley, who had already announced his desire to compose.
             an epic rebuttal to Aeschylus" Prometheus Bound when he reread .
             the play in 1816, although he did not begin writing Prometheus .
             Unbound until September 1818, after Frankenstein was published. (72) .
             It is clear upon close examination that indeed several dimensions of Victor Frankenstein are modeled directly from Percy Shelly. Victor was Percy Shelley's pen name and Victor Frankenstein's family also resembles Percy Shelley's in both the father is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and the oldest son has a favorite sister named Elizabeth. According to Mellor:.
             Victor Frankenstein embodies certain elements of Percy .
             Shelley's temperament and character that had begun to trouble .
             Mary Shelley - namely and intellectual hubris and belief in the .
             supreme importance of mental abstractions that led him to be .
             insensitive to the feelings of those who did not share his ideas .
             and enthusiasms. (73) .
             Frankenstein's education is based on Percy Shelley's; both were avid students of several noted medieval alchemists as were they equally fascinated with alchemy and chemistry. As Victor himself declares shortly after arriving at the University, "From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation" (Frankenstein 48). By sending Victor to the University of Ingolstadt, Mary Shelley further signaled his association with the radical politics advocated by Percy Shelley. Ingolstadt was famous as the home of the Illuminati, a secret revolutionary society founded by Ingolstadt's Professor of Law, Adam Weishaupt. According to Mellor, "Weishaupt advocated the perfection of mankind through the overthrow of established religious and political institutions" (73). It was the goal of Shelley that by mirroring Victor with Percy she could show the world the peril of overstepping your natural bounds and attempting to play god.