Abstract: This article expands on the existing understanding of the relationship between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations , by examining the ways in which both novels utilize thematic concerns embedded within John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost , particularly those that are derived from Milton's political position in relation to the prevailing indissolubility of marriage in England as set out in his treatises on divorce. It argues that both Shelley in her depiction of Frankenstein's creature and Dickens with the corpse-like Miss Havisham, incorporated Milton's likening of a failed marriage to the torture of Mezentius, where a living person was roped to a dead body, arguing that in doing so, each of these novels became a locus advocating for the Miltonic needful divorce, which would allow a divorce to relieve an ill-made marriage on the sole ground of the incompatibility between a husband and a wife.
Deborah Siddoway (Sun,) studied this question.