Critical Introduction

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was an English author whose best known work is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, an icon of Gothic horror. It has been the inspiration for innumerable adaptations—movies, television series, short stories, novels, comic books, video games, and on. The monster, who has no name in the novel, is one of the most famous of all monsters from any period. It is a common for pedants to correct those who call the monster “Frankenstein,” when Victor Frankenstein is the doctor and the monster is his creation; however, many readers find the doctor more monstrous than his creation.

The novel purportedly was conceived as part of a sort of game. Mary Shelley, her romantic partner—the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—and a few friends were travelling in Switzerland together. Stuck inside on a rainy day, they first read ghost stories and then challenged each other to write their own. Mary Shelley's was the only one completed and was the start of Frankenstein. Her text unfolds as an epistolary novel, a novel that is framed as a series of letters, written from a ship captain to his sister. Captain Walton saves Victor from an ice flow in the Arctic, and then the doctor tells him the harrowing tale of his creation of an artificial man. The novel has been seen as a warning against unfettered ambitions, technology, rejection of difference, and poor parenting, among many other themes.

We here present a very short pair of excerpts from the novel, a pair of passages introducing and describing the Monster. In the first passage, the Monster comes to life and inspires extreme revulsion in his creator as “horror and disgust filled [his] heart.” In the second passage, after disasters and acts of violence, creature and creator again meet, and exchange heated but eloquent words. We encourage you to read the whole of the short novel.

Reading Questions

What details does Shelley provide about the appearance of the Monster, and which seem most directed toward evoking negative feelings in the reader? Is the conversation between the doctor and the Monster what you would expect? Why or why not? How does the Monster explain his actions?