Summary

Chapter 7 opens with a passage from Frankenstein in which the monster begs his creator to make a female for him. Then Mary Shelley observes, “In the progress of my story I am educating my monster. My monster is educating me” (127). Mary Shelley observes that the story has forced her to consider the desires of the monster. She begins to empathize with Victor Frankenstein’s agony for having created something he cannot uncreate. Mary Shelley observes that her monster is shunned by humankind, but has learned all that he knows from humans, putting him in a precarious situation.

Percy Shelley recites his poem “Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude” to Mary Shelley and says he views Victor Frankenstein as a modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley wonders if she should call her novel The New Prometheus. Mary Shelley thinks of many novels she has read that...