Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was one of the most elegant and horrifying pieces of literature written in its time, and is still widely considered a horror classic. The book follows Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a reclusive mad scientist, who seeks to create new life by sewing together the limbs and remains of several other dead bodies and reanimate them. The book and its monster have been compared to many different things in a variety of subtexts, but one of the clearest readings of the book indicates that the monster represents the guilt and horror Mary Shelley felt about her many dead children. In many ways, Frankenstein's monster is at once Shelley's dead child and Shelley herself; struggling to find life and belonging in a world that simply does not want it. However, the popular and seminal 1931 film adaptation of the novel takes a slightly different approach, as Frankenstein's monster is presented more as a misunderstood protagonist on his own than in relation to the scientist - this film extends the novel's other subtext of the monster being indicative of the Other that simply wants to belong in society. These perspectives are compared, and various readings on both texts are provided.
One of the potential origins for the writing of Frankenstein came from Shelley's own hazardous experiences with childbearing. In February 1815, she gave birth to a baby girl - however, twelve days later, the girl passed away prematurely. Shelley was grief-stricken, and later dreams about her child in March of that year. Writing in her journal, Shelley says that she had a “Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived" (NLM, 2005). Though she had a baby boy who successfully lived not long after, it is possible this desire - this pull to reanimate the dead so that they may once more be among the living - that drove Shelley to write Frankenstein.
There are a number of parent-child tensions in Frankenstein; the allegory between Victor Frankenstein and the monster being his 'son' are quite clear, as the man is figuratively borne of his invention. In essence, the book is about the inadequate way in which a parent can prepare their children for society, instead leaving them to "retreat into themselves" and forego civilization (Claridge, 1985). The Shelley dream of making her "little baby" come to life again is personified here; though it is not really said how the monster is made to be alive, one wonders if it would have been by rubbing it "before the fire" as Shelley described in her dream. This is an interesting perspective, due to the monster's fear of fire, particularly in the 1931 film. In this way, Shelley is Victor - making her dream come true by making the dead come to life, creating an offspring regardless of its physical origin.
Despite this romantic desire to have a child come back to life, Shelley's writing and characterization of Victor implies that the way in which the child would be raised would have been far from pleasant. The lack of affection that Victor receives as a child is extended, as a consequence, to the monster; neither know how to love properly. While, on the surface, his parents were loving and affectionate, the writing implies that Victor is unhappy about that. By being his parents' "plaything and idol," they do not allow him to be an individual or a part of the family (Shelley, p. 33). Victor's childhood recollections are sarcastic and ill-considered; there is no way that "every hour of [his] infant life [he] received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control" (p. 34). This is made particularly true when it is revealed that he does not have those qualities. Later, when Elizabeth is added to the family, Frankenstein considers her an object of infatuation, which borders on obsession. This prefaces the obsession that he will have with the monster, which could be implicit of Shelley's obsession with her dead daughter as well.
The creation and execution of the monster's life is indicative of Shelley's anxieties over how the child's life might have led. The struggles and pressures that the monster experiences could be a sign of two things: either Shelley believes that the child might be better off dead, as its life would have been hard, or that Shelley's inability to keep the child alive is what causes its outcast nature. The idea of the lost child is what recoils the townspeople, not the reanimated monster itself. Frankenstein's monster has always been seen as a misunderstood creature, and Shelley's fear of the possibility of her dead daughter having been misunderstood in the same way is a kind of mental gymnastics for her to allow herself to live with that tragic death.
At the same time, Shelley also explores the great potential that the creature could aspire to. Unlike in the film, and by consequence most cultural depictions of the monster, the creature itself is very eloquent in its speech, and quite intelligent. In this way, it is only the fact that he is physically repugnant that drives him away from civilization - if he were in a normal body, he would be welcomed into society. However, it is because of his immediate rejection by Victor, and the subsequent search for revenge, that he becomes a true monster. The creation of the monster, once accomplished, results in Victor recoiling immediately from it: he runs away in disgust immediately because of its appearance, which he had nonetheless acknowledged while he was building him - "I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then" (p. 58). The presence of dead flesh on a dead body is natural; Shelley's attempt to bring it to life made it something between life and death, causing the mother/Victor to recoil and run away. This is a natural progression of Shelley's wish to bring her dead daughter back to life: if she had actually accomplished it, what then? Would she have been able to handle that responsibility and the grotesque nature of a now-alive infant? The book suggests she could not, and this is why Victor runs from the room and falls ill.
After the creature disappears, Victor recovers from his illness and goes to search for him. Finding his brother William murdered, he knows it was by the creature; this makes him feel primarily responsible. "I was the true murderer" (p. 89). By setting the blame upon himself, he likely does what Shelley did upon her daughter's death - placed the responsibility and the guilt upon her own head for not protecting and caring for it enough. Her own negligence, as well as Victor's, led to death - of her daughter and William, respectively. Eventually, Victor owns up to all of the death that the creature wrought before it was put down, though not without an ounce of apology: "I abhorred the face of manoh, not abhorred! I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them" (pp. 184-185). Though he attempts to justify his own motivations by saying he truly respected life in the end, he knows that ultimately he was responsible, and that he did try to play God with the creation of life.
The monster is much like Victor as well: trying to overcome the shadow of his parentage and owning his life. As Victor tried to destroy his parents reputation by succeeding them and surpassing them in the realm of science, so too did the monster want to take his revenge on his father for creating and rejecting him. At one point, he does recognize that he did not provide for the creature as much as he should have - "I ought to have made him happy before I complained of his wickedness" (p. 102). These types of parental regrets are the kinds likely echoed by Shelley, who may have lamented whatever slights or ill thoughts she considered about her child before it died twelve days after birth. Her own guilt is echoed in the hatred that the creature feels for Victor; she is afraid that, even if the child were to have actually come back to life, it would have rejected and hated her. "You, my own creator, detest and spurn me" (p. 99). The creature states that his negligence makes him "the author at once of my existence and its unspeakable torments" (p. 220).
Through Shelley's writing of the monster, some of the more tender aspects of this anxiety regarding her dead daughter is explored. The monster learns much about life and the world, and ruminates on it - man is "at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base" (p. 119). These are things that the child itself could have learned, and Shelley could have taught her; however, since she is separated from the child, she must learn it on her own, as the monster does.
The book is mostly Victor's story, with Victor as Shelley, the individual desperate for love and affection (Shelley from her son, Victor from the scientific community and, by extension, his parents). The whole enterprise that Victor goes through to create the monster is borne of his desire to be the best scientific mind in the world, but there is also an undercurrent of having an object of affection that is his property, much like Elizabeth was to him in childhood, and as he was to his parents. By bringing life to another being, he removes his own humanity and places it in the monster; this creates a vacuum where Victor is a human being without humanity, and the monster is a grotesque creature that has humanity no one cares to see. By showing this transference of kindness and compassion, Shelley notes that she would lose a part of herself - who she fundamentally is - if she were to have her dead daughter alive once more.
The 1931 film interpretation of Shelley's Frankenstein monster - that it is the consequence of what would actually happen if she had her dead daughter back, a gross but eloquent monster that would know it did not belong in the natural order of things - is largely eschewed in the 1930s movie starring Boris Karloff, but still remains in some respects. The primary difference with this work is the fact that the monster is now much more monstrous; he is still tall and stitched together, but he is hardly intelligent, though he is likely self-aware. The monster cannot speak, operating only in grunts and growls, and is often clumsy and bumbling as he walks. In many ways, this reinterpretation of the character is very much in line with the notion that he is the reanimated infant that Shelley dreamed about. His walk is a toddler-like shuffle, and the fact that he can only speak in guttural sounds makes the expression of his demands very toddler-like. He is also learning as a child, as well; he is surprised and angered at sunlight, and he does not have the established intelligence that the Frankenstein's monster of the novel possesses.
However, despite this infantilization of Frankenstein, the creature benefits from having the main perspective throughout the movie. While there is still some focus on Victor, the story is very clearly told through the monster's eyes. While the novel's monster was merely kind, the movie monster is sweet and innocent, incapable of doing wrong simply because he does not know its own strength. He lashes out and recoils like a wounded animal at times, and has a loose grasp of understanding the world. When he befriends the young Maria, he thinks that Maria can float in the water - he throws her into the lake, drowning her as a result. This fundamental misunderstanding of the ways of the world could have been avoided if Victor was around to parent him instead of treating him like a science experiment.
In conclusion, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein depicts the monster as a crudely and ungodly reanimated version of her dead daughter, who perished early in life. Wondering about the immorality of a resurrection, as well as how the daughter would feel about the consequences of that resurrection, drive the themes of the book. Victor is Shelley, the anxious and hubristic being who feels she can create life but does not realize it is doomed to failure. The monster is Shelley's child, the innocent, pure being who is angry at its creator for robbing it of the essential humanity it was meant to be on this world to possess. The film continues this examination by making the monster a literal child, with little to no understanding of the world or the capacity to learn; this is where Shelley's dead child is stuck - in an endless cycle of infantilism.
Works Cited
Claridge, Laura P. "Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein: The Search for Communion."
Studies in the Novel vol. 17, no. 1. Spring 1985. Print.
"Frankenstein: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley." Duluth Public Library. 24 October, 2005. Web.
Nicolson, E. "Frankenstein's Creature and the Romantic Period." HubPages. 5 February 2010.
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Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Print.
Whale, James. Dir. Frankenstein. Perf. Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke. Universal
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