t was in 1816 that a 17-year-old Mary Shelley wrote down a story that she said had ‘haunted her midnight pillow’, and Frankenstein was born. The novel’s subtitle, ‘the modern Prometheus’, was a reference to the Titan in Greek mythology that stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man that he moulded from clay. His punishment was to be bound to a rock for all eternity, his liver eaten by eagles. Frankenstein ‘steals’ the secret ‘elixir of life’ from nature and re-animates dead matter, and his punishment is to be forced to confront the consequences of his actions.
