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The Modern Prometheus: Drawing the Lines to Gothic Imagery

It has been quite some time since I dusted off the jacket of Gothic literature. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. A book that, of itself, is held in such high regard as one of the central pillars of horror writing. The characterization of a gothic story is to put it shortly: a suffering heroine and supernatural occurrences. There are many Gothic themes other than these two- but these make up the central pillars in what is a gothic story. Mary Shelly uses these themes to craft this story by setting the story in this atmosphere but infuse a sense of foreboding dread throughout the piece. 
Frankenstein's theme in its entirety is Gothic. The story begins with a number of letters written by Walton to his sister on his voyage. With the meeting of Frankenstein's monster. This establishes passion-driven, willful villain-hero and his pursuit of creation and also death, decay, darkness, and madness with supernatural overtones. This directly adheres to gothic themes as the story continues delving deeper into the supernatural and lingering doom of the characters. ‘the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature’. Already alluding to the fact this thing is not of a normal human. 

 This can be seen to be Frankenstein’s main downfall: his obsession for transgression was what made him make the monster. 'I read with ardor those works, so full of genius and discrimination’. Frankenstein has a passion for knowledge which makes science, to him, seem obsessive and unrestrained.  His desperate diving into the concept of creation is one that not only plays on the theme of 'Man as God' but adds in the sense of dread and foreboding because it delves into the convoluted age old question of, if God made man, and man makes something- are we not God? Mary Shelly consistently obeys this theme by pushing everything from the interactions to the weather in the novel to mark on the unpleasantness of it all. There are so many Gothic themes in this story. Which is why many people go to this specific literature when trying to explain thematically what Gothic is. 



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