The subtitle Shelley gives her novel—“the modern Prometheus”—alerts the reader to the fact that themes of ethics and religion will be of import in the story, which revolves, to a considerable extent, around the question of how far it is right or acceptable to “play God” just because one can. In mythology, Prometheus famously stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. If Frankenstein is a modern Prometheus, then he is not a god himself, but someone who feels it is permissible to intrude into, and interfere with, the interactions between God and humanity which would normally occur. Where God, or nature, may have decreed that what is dead is dead and that people should only be born in the natural way, Frankenstein has taken it upon himself to interrogate and challenge these paradigms.

Once he has succeeded in creating the desired offspring, however, Frankenstein finds himself faced with unanticipated problems. Where humanity was created in the image of God, Frankenstein, too, has sought to create a being of which he could be proud, but ultimately he finds his creation so repulsive that he abandons him and seeks the creature’s death. This raises another ethical question which is debated throughout the novel: how far is a creator required to be a father? Does Frankenstein, as the creature insists, have a responsibility to his creation? Should he ensure that the creature’s life is happy, that he is loved, that he has a companion with whom to spend his time? The creature pursues Frankenstein, insisting that the doctor has shirked his responsibilities—he has not behaved as a father. However, elsewhere in the novel there are examples of fathers, including Frankenstein’s own, who have not behaved in a particularly nurturing or loving manner toward their offspring. By failing to care for what he has created, because he feels it to be a grotesque and monstrous reflection of what humanity should be, is Frankenstein behaving monstrously—or simply like many human fathers? Is he behaving, even, simply like the God of Milton’s Paradise Lost, to which the novel alludes, who cast aside one of his own creations, Lucifer?