Frankenstein and the Physiognomy of Desire

Beginning with the commonplace that Frankenstein is a family romance, I will argue that its essential theme is promethean sin—a theme uniting an incredible complex of psycho-biographical motives. I will trace a few strands of what I take as the dominant motive, not because the rest proves incidental, but because an adequate treatment of psychological material in Frankenstein requires book-length scope. The dominant incestuous root for Promethean sin seems to take hold in uncompromising psychic wishes for exclusive love, and in possession of the mother—the source of first love. Commentators have noted odd familial relations in Mary Shelley's novel, but they usually avoid its psychological density or mistake the motives involved.1 In this study, I hope to expose some of that material, begin exploring Mary Shelley's deep motives, and acknowledge her wisdom in these matters. Principally, I will draw on general Freudian suggestions and allow the novel to fulfill or qualify the cogency of such awareness in its narrative progress. To astonishing extent, Mary Shelley