Why is Mary Shelley’s horror story so misunderstood 200 years ago?

It is perhaps a double-edged sword that the enormous success of the Hollywood incarnations (particularly James Whale’s 1931 film starring Boris Karloff as the Creature) in many ways ensured the longevity of the story but somewhat eclipsed Shelley’s version of it. “Frankenstein [the film] “He created the definitive cinematic image of the mad scientist, and in the process launched thousands of imitations,” Frayling wrote. “He combined a domesticated form of expressionism, exaggeration, and irreverent adaptation of recognized classic European actors and cameramen—and the American carnival tradition—to create an American genre. It began to look as if Hollywood had actually invented Frankenstein.” Thus a cinema legend was born.

Just as Hollywood chose Mary Shelley to enhance its version of her story, she borrowed from historical and biblical stories to create her own message and mythology. The novel’s subtitle, “The Modern Prometheus,” recalls the character of ancient Greek and Latin myth who steals fire from the gods in various ways and gives it to man, representing the dangers of transgression. The other great reference in the novel is to God and Adam, and a quote from Paradise Lost appears in the book’s epigraph: “Did I ask you, O maker of my clay, to make me a human being?” It is arguably the creature’s humanity – and his tragedy – that is often forgotten in his cinematic transformations into a mute but terrifying monster.

Shelley gave the creature a voice and a literary education to express his thoughts and desires (he is one of the book’s three narrators). Like Caliban in The Tempest, to whom Shakespeare delivers a poignant and poetic speech, the creature’s lament is haunting: “Remember that I am your creature; I should be your Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom you cast out of joy through no fault. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I have been good and upright; misery has made me a devil. Make me happy, and I will be virtuous again.”

If the creature is viewed as a deformed human being rather than a monster, its tragedy is deepened. He was first rejected by his creator, what Christopher Frayling called the “postnatal moment,” and is often identified as parental abandonment. Given that Mary Shelley lost her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, at birth, had just buried her infant daughter, and was caring for her pregnant sister while writing the book—which took exactly nine months to complete—birth (and death) is particularly relevant. The nascent creature becomes increasingly isolated as society retreats from him; It was made goodBut it is rejection that creates his deadly revenge. It is a powerful allegory of responsibility towards children, strangers, or those who do not conform to traditional ideals of beauty. “The way we sometimes identify with Frankenstein – that we’ve all taken risks, we’ve all had moments of arrogance – and partly with the creature, they’re both aspects of ourselves – all of ourselves,” says Fiona Sampson. “They both talk to us about being human. And that’s incredibly powerful.”