How Shelley Builds the Responsibility Argument

⚙️ How Shelley Builds the Responsibility Argument

Shelley does not argue her moral case directly — she builds it through structure and narrative form. The frame narrative (Walton → Victor → Creature) is itself a responsibility argument: each narrator passes the story to another, and each passing is a partial abdication. Walton receives Victor's warning but nearly repeats his mistake; Victor tells his story but never acts on the telling; the Creature voices his grievance but can only destroy what remains.

The Prometheus subtitle (full title: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus) — Prometheus (from Greek myth, meaning "forethought") stole divine fire and was eternally punished — signals that overreaching creation carries permanent consequence. But Shelley adapts the myth: her Prometheus suffers not for the theft but for the abandonment of what the theft created. Creation without care is the crime.

The ABANDONMENT → COMPLICITY → CONSEQUENCE trajectory works because each stage is causally linked, not merely sequential. Stage 1 (the flight in Chapter 5) enables Stage 2 (the silence at Justine's trial, the destroyed female Creature). Stage 2 enables Stage 3 (every death that follows). Shelley's argument is: responsibility, once refused, does not disappear. It escalates until it claims everything the refuser loves.