The term Gothic conjures up images of frightened women, graveyards, and haunted castles in the mist, popular settings for horror films. But is this what Gothic means? The Oxford Companion to English Literature defines Gothic as, "Tales of the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural, usually set amid haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and wild picturesque landscapes" (Drabble 405). Furthermore, according to the Oxford Companion, Gothic tales "reached the height of their considerable fashion in the 1790's and the early years of the 19th century" (Drabble 406). It becomes obvious that Gothic is a literary term which describes a particular type of story and atmospheric surrounding. In so doing, it establishes a contrast between darkness and light, which evokes a sinister irony. In such tales, darkness often prevails, and according to literary scholars, elevated these horror stories into "Gothic sublime" (Bernstein 333). Specifically, the Gothic sublime symbolizes a "black hole which finally absorbs history into its own emptiness" (Bernstein 333). Gothic fiction is, quite simply, man taking a "walk on the dark side."
             There is, undeniably, no novel which epitomizes the popular Gothic structure more than Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's early 19th-century masterpiece, Frankenstein (actually entitled, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus). According to Greek mythology, Prometheus is a hero who steals fire from the heavens to serve man, but he is ultimately punished by the mighty Zeus, who chains him to a rock, where a vulture feasts on his liver. Inexplicably, however, the liver grows back each night. This reference abounds with Gothic possibilities, which Mary Shelley was, no doubt aware. She was long a fan of Gothic tales, and it was a night of story-telling in a Geneva castle which inspired her story. As she herself recalled in her introduction to Frankenstein, "The...