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Since its anonymous publication in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has transcended its origins as a simple gothic ghost story conceived during a damp summer at the Villa Diodati. Over the past two centuries, the narrative of the ambitious scientist and his reanimated, abandoned creature has evolved into a foundational myth of the modern era, providing a versatile framework for exploring the deepest anxieties of human civilization. To approach this novel through the lens of cultural studies is to recognize that Frankenstein is not a static text, but rather a dynamic cultural artifact that constantly adapts to reflect the political, social, and technological crises of whatever era encounters it.
The following exhaustive report operates as a detailed, step-by-step blog analysis based strictly on the framework of the "Thinking Activity: A Cultural Studies Approach to Frankenstein". By systematically navigating the revolutionary ideas embedded in the narrative, the creature's pervasive influence in global popular culture, and the profound lessons hidden within the creature's literary education, this analysis uncovers the myriad ways in which Shelley's masterpiece continues to speak to modern society.
Part 1: Revolutionary Births
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in an era defined by extreme political and social upheaval. Born to radical thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Shelley was intellectually steeped in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the dawning realities of the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, the novel is deeply infused with revolutionary ideas, serving as a powerful critique of the scientific, philosophical, and political ideologies of the nineteenth century.
The Creature as Proletarian:
When viewed through a Marxist cultural lens, the creature emerges as the ultimate embodiment of the oppressed working class the proletariat. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the capitalist bourgeoisie began leveraging mass industrial labor, creating a massive new class of workers who were fundamentally alienated from the products of their own labor and from society at large.
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| Visualizing the creature as the alienated, manufactured laborer of the Industrial Revolution. |
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| Bram Stoker's Dracula |
Literary theorist Franco Moretti argues that the monster in Frankenstein and the vampire in Bram Stoker's Dracula function as the two complementary, horrifying faces of nineteenth-century capitalism: the disfigured, exploited wage laborer and the ruthless, aristocratic proprietor. In Frankenstein, the creature is denied a name, an individuality, and a familial history. He is entirely a product of artificial construction, assembled from the fragmented remains of the poor, the criminal, and the marginalized found in charnel houses and dissecting rooms. Like the industrial proletariat, he belongs wholly to his creator and represents a collective, manufactured workforce rather than a natural-born individual.
The relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the creature mirrors the dialectical relationship between capital and wage labor. Victor, representing the ruling bourgeois class, extracts the raw materials required to build the creature, but he immediately recoils in terror when the creature awakens, gains consciousness, and demands basic rights.
The fear aroused by the monster is, fundamentally, the deep-seated societal fear of the working masses rising up to destroy their masters. Interestingly, when the creature corners Victor and asks for a mate, his demands are remarkably "reformist" rather than revolutionary. He does not initially seek to overthrow human society; he merely seeks basic citizenship, companionship, and the right to live peacefully in exile. He tells Victor, "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous". However, Victor's terror stems from the realization that he has produced his own gravedigger an entity stronger than himself that he can no longer control or exploit.
Warren Montag expands on this reading by arguing that the creature represents the "unrepresentability" of the proletariat. The creature's existence is a byproduct of a society recklessly advancing in science and industry without installing ethical safeguards. The ultimate tragedy of the creature is the tragedy of the alienated worker: he is brought into existence to serve a system that despises him, and his subsequent turn to violence is a direct, desperate result of his systemic isolation and the denial of his fundamental humanity. The creature is the embodiment of the industrial revolution manifesting in an otherwise rural, romantic world, making him a symbol of the terrifying, unstoppable march of modernity.
A Race of Devils: Imperialism and the "Other"
Just as the creature represents domestic class anxieties, his depiction draws heavily from cultural anxieties surrounding the "Other," intersecting deeply with themes of race, imperialism, and colonization. The novel was composed during the height of European imperial expansion, a time when colonial powers were subjugating foreign lands and classifying non-European peoples as savage, inferior, or monstrous.
Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak extensively analyzed Frankenstein through the framework of imperialism and subaltern studies. The "subaltern" refers to populations that are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hegemonic power structure. The creature functions perfectly as a subaltern figure, alienated not only by his class origins but by his profound physical otherness. Victor's description of the creature focusing obsessively on his "yellow skin," "watery eyes," and "straight black lips" immediately codes the creature as racially distinct and horrifying to the standard European gaze. These physical differences are treated by human society as indisputable markers of inherent monstrosity, reflecting the era's racist ideologies that justified colonial domination by equating physical difference with moral corruption.
The narrative explicitly engages with the brutal history of empire when the creature secretly observes the De Lacey family in the forest. From his hiding place, the creature listens as Felix teaches his fiancée Safie, a Turkish exile, using Constantin-François de Volney's Ruins of Empires. Through this text, the creature receives a comprehensive education in human history, learning simultaneously about the heights of human art and the devastating depths of human cruelty, including the colonization of the Americas and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. He quickly realizes that human society values "high and unsullied descent united with riches," neither of which he will ever possess.
This realization forces the creature to confront a heartbreaking existential crisis: if he has no wealth, no family, and a terrifying physical form, what is his place in the world? The creature's eloquent, highly rational speech throughout the novel represents a powerful counter-narrative to colonial assumptions. He is a subaltern who manages to learn the language of his oppressors, mastering it to articulate his profound suffering and demand justice. Yet, as Spivak's theories explore, the ultimate tragedy of the subaltern is that even when they speak, the dominant power structures refuse to listen. Victor continually views the creature as a "devil" and a "demon," entirely ignoring the creature's rational, emotional pleas for a female companion. This dynamic reflects the inherent guilt and the inevitable, violent backlash of a colonial mindset that creates and subjugates an "Other," only to be destroyed by the very forces it arrogantly sought to dominate.
From Natural Philosophy to Cyborg: Feminism and Bioethics
The third revolutionary birth within the novel concerns the realm of science, gender dynamics, and the ethical boundaries of human hubris. Frankenstein functions as a pioneering work of science fiction, serving as a desperate warning against the unchecked pursuit of knowledge. By exploring the historical transition from the mystical pursuits of alchemy (represented by Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus) to modern chemistry and galvanism, Mary Shelley crafted a cautionary tale that resonates powerfully in today's age of biotechnology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence.
A prominent feminist critique of the novel, championed by scholars such as Anne K. Mellor, argues that Victor Frankenstein's ultimate crime is his attempt to bypass the female reproductive system entirely. Victor engages in a patriarchal usurpation of motherhood, attempting to create life in a sterile, isolated laboratory without any female participation. In doing so, he aligns with an "aggressive male" scientific mindset that seeks to capture, dominate, and penetrate the ''passive female nature''.
This critique is deeply rooted in the philosophy of Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote the foundational feminist text A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Wollstonecraft argued fiercely against the societal structures and Rousseauian ideals that kept women uneducated, docile, and confined strictly to the domestic sphere. In Frankenstein, the female characters such as Elizabeth Lavenza and Justine Moritz are depicted as passive, angelic, and ultimately powerless victims of a male-dominated society that prioritizes masculine ambition over domestic affection. Elizabeth is framed as a beautiful object to be protected, while Justine is executed for a crime she did not commit because the patriarchal justice system refuses to believe her innocence.
Johanna M. Smith builds upon this by analyzing the "separate spheres" of men and women in the novel. Because women are confined to the domestic space, they are entirely absent from the public, scientific sphere where Victor operates. By failing to provide the maternal love, care, and nurturing traditionally associated with the female sphere, Victor ensures that his creation will become a monster. The novel suggests that scientific experimentation divorced from moral responsibility, empathy, and respect for natural processes will inevitably yield disastrous results.
This ethical dilemma is highly pertinent to modern debates surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and bioethics. Today, researchers grapple with the "AI alignment problem" the challenge of ensuring that highly advanced, potentially sapient AI systems are aligned with human values and ethics. Just as Victor Frankenstein was brilliant enough to stitch together a functional body and imbue it with the "spark of being," he completely failed to align his creation with societal norms or provide it with the ethical framework necessary to navigate the world. Furthermore, modern philosophers warn of the "AI ethical treatment problem". If humanity creates advanced near-term AI systems (ANTs) or whole-brain emulations (WBEs) with the capacity to think and suffer, does humanity not have an obligation to treat them with dignity?. Victor’s immediate disgust and abandonment of his creation upon its awakening is a stark warning against technological advancement that lacks foresight, compassion, and accountability.
The shift in Mary Shelley's own perspective on scientific autonomy and moral responsibility is evident when comparing the original 1818 text to the heavily revised 1831 edition.
By 1831, after Shelley had suffered the tragic deaths of her husband Percy Shelley and multiple children, she revised the text to reflect a much more fatalistic worldview. The 1831 Victor is stripped of his autonomy, becoming a pawn of cosmic forces. However, regardless of the edition read, the core warning remains intact: human ambition that seeks to conquer and manipulate nature, rather than coexist with it, is inherently self-destructive.
Part 2: The Frankenpheme in Popular Culture
The cultural footprint of Frankenstein extends far beyond its literary origins, permeating global media and shaping modern discourse on technology. The philosopher and ecocritic Timothy Morton coined the term "Frankenpheme" to describe the cultural elements, tropes, and ideas derived from the novel that are continually reproduced and remixed across various forms of media.
The Concept of Dark Ecology and the Mesh
Timothy Morton utilizes Frankenstein to elaborate on his groundbreaking concepts of "Dark Ecology" and the "mesh". Morton argues that traditional, romanticized concepts of "Nature" (with a capital N) are actually harmful to environmentalism because they create a false, binary separation between humanity and the natural world. Placing nature on a pedestal to be admired from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for women it objectifies and alienates it. Instead, Morton proposes the concept of the "mesh," which represents the total, inescapable interconnectedness of all living and non-living things, including humans, animals, synthetic chemicals, and global climate systems.
In this philosophical framework, Victor’s creature is the ultimate "strange stranger" an entity whose ontological status blurs the rigid lines between life and death, human and non-human, natural and unnatural. The creature cannot be neatly categorized, making him deeply uncanny and horrifying to those who desperately cling to anthropocentric boundaries. Through an ecocritical lens, the novel is not just a warning about rogue science, but a profound meditation on how humans treat other life forms and a critique of the belief that human beings are the central entities in the universe.
The "Frankenpheme" thus appears in modern society whenever humanity confronts massive, uncontrollable phenomena that transcend local boundaries what Morton calls "hyperobjects". Hyperobjects are viscous, non-local, and phased entities like global climate change, nuclear radiation, or the mass proliferation of styrofoam. The contemporary anxiety surrounding genetically modified organisms (often dubbed "Frankenfoods" by the media) perfectly encapsulates the enduring power of the Frankenpheme to express our dread of human interference in the ecological mesh.
First Film Adaptation and Popular Retellings
The adaptability of Frankenstein is a testament to its foundational mythic status. The novel's translation to the screen began over a century ago, and each iteration has reshaped Shelley's message to address the specific anxieties of its time.
The very first cinematic adaptation was produced in 1910 by Edison Studios. This 15-minute silent film, starring Charles Ogle as the creature, took a distinctly psychological approach to the narrative. Rather than focusing on the physical science of suturing body parts together, the 1910 film suggested that the creature was born directly from the evil, unnatural thoughts within Victor’s own mind. The film's creation sequence utilized a dummy that was set on fire, with the footage played in reverse to make it appear as though the monster was forming out of ashes and nothingness. In the film's climax, it utilizes a mirror to deliver a profound twist: the creature eventually fades away into Victor's own reflection. This suggests a Jekyll and Hyde dynamic where the monster is not a literal, physical threat, but rather the externalization of the creator's psychological demons, guilt, and unchecked ego.
However, it was director James Whale's 1931 film adaptation, starring Boris Karloff, that permanently cemented the visual iconography of the Frankenpheme in the global consciousness. The flat head, the neck bolts, the green skin, and the lumbering, inarticulate groan of the monster replaced Mary Shelley's agile, eloquent, and deeply philosophical creature. While this visual shorthand allowed the monster to become a universal, easily recognizable symbol of horror, it unfortunately stripped the creature of his voice. By muting the monster, the 1931 film reduced him from a tragic, marginalized intellectual demanding his rights into a simple, unthinking brute.
Despite this reduction in complexity, the Frankenpheme has been utilized in countless adaptations to address contemporary technological and societal fears. From comedic parodies like Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein, which explores the absurdity of inheriting a dark familial legacy, to cyberpunk sci-fi reimaginings like Blade Runner, the core narrative remains infinitely malleable. Blade Runner questions the humanity of synthetic "replicants" and the ethical duties of the corporate creators who build them for slave labor, directly mirroring Victor's abandonment of his creation. Retellings continually reshape the message for new audiences, ensuring that whenever humanity pushes the boundaries of creation, the shadow of Frankenstein's monster inevitably follows.
Part 3: Deepening the Analysis Through Activities
To fully grasp the nuances of a cultural studies approach, it is essential to engage directly with the text and its subsequent global adaptations. The following activities break down the pivotal moments of the creature's education and the international reach of the novel's themes.
Activity 1: Reading and Analysis - The Creature's Education
One of the most profound and philosophically rich sections of the novel occurs when the creature, hiding in a hovel attached to the De Lacey family cottage, discovers a discarded leather portmanteau containing three books: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Because the creature has no parent or mentor to explain the difference between fiction, myth, and history, he reads all three texts as absolute, factual accounts of the world.
This literary education is a double-edged sword; it simultaneously empowers him with the "godlike science" of language and alienates him further by highlighting his utter isolation and grotesque reality.
Milton’s epic poem has the most devastating and permanent impact on the creature's worldview. The creature draws agonizing parallels between his own miserable existence and the characters in the biblical creation myth. The thematic weight of Paradise Lost is signaled from the very title page of the 1818 novel, which bears an epigraph quoting Adam’s plea to God:
The creature initially identifies with Adam, as both were the first of their kind, created artificially rather than born of a woman. However, the creature quickly realizes a horrifying distinction: Adam was created perfect, beautiful, and guarded by the love of a benevolent Creator, whereas the creature is hideously deformed and immediately abandoned by Victor. Consequently, the creature realizes he is much closer to the figure of Satan. Yet, even Satan had fellow fallen angels to converse with in Hell; the creature is entirely, irrevocably alone.
The creature's eloquent confrontation with Victor on the glaciers of Mont Blanc forces the creator and the reader to grapple with the consequences of this abandonment. By mastering language, the creature ceases to be a mere scientific anomaly and becomes a sentient being demanding his inherent rights. He utilizes his literary education as a powerful tool for philosophical rebellion, proving that the true monstrosity lies not in his physical form, but in Victor's failure to provide love and moral guidance.
Activity 2: Film and Media Reflection - The Global Monster
The influence of Frankenstein is not limited to Western media; the Frankenpheme has permeated global cinema, reshaping its themes to fit diverse cultural and religious contexts. In Indian cinema, the translation and domestication of the gothic horror genre reveal fascinating intersections between Western literary tropes and local cultural anxieties.
The Ramsay Brothers, who pioneered the Hindi horror film industry in the 1970s and 1980s, frequently utilized tropes derived directly from Western gothic traditions, including the monstrous outsider, the mad creator, and the haunted, isolated estate. While their films such as Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (1972), Darwaza (1978), and Purana Mandir (1984) are famous for blending horror with traditional Bollywood elements like romance, musical numbers, and explicit supernatural folklore, they rely heavily on the fear of the physical "Other" and the grotesque.
In these Hindi adaptations, the fear of the unknown (xenophobia) and the violent disruption of traditional family structures parallel the exact fears explored in Shelley's novel. The "monster" in these Indian contexts often represents a disruption of dharma (cosmic and social order) or the return of repressed societal sins, reflecting the localized fears of a rapidly changing, modernizing India clashing with ancient superstitions. By domesticating the monster, these films prove that the core themes of Frankenstein the fear of the outcast and the consequences of unchecked ambition are universally resonant.
Modern media continues to reinvent the tale to suit the current cultural zeitgeist. Visionary director Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Frankenstein adaptation for Netflix promises to strip away decades of campy cinematic parodies to return to the heart of Shelley’s novel exploring the tragedy of a brilliant but egotistical scientist and his deeply tragic creation. Del Toro’s historical affinity for sympathetic monsters suggests a cinematic interpretation that will likely lean heavily into ecocriticism and the defense of the marginalized "Other," proving that the cultural resonance of the creature remains as potent and necessary today as it was in 1818.
Conclusion
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a masterwork of infinite interpretative elasticity. Through a dedicated cultural studies approach, the text transforms from a simple nineteenth-century horror story into a profound, multifaceted mirror reflecting humanity's greatest ambitions and its darkest, most deeply rooted fears.
The analysis reveals that the creature is not merely a monster, but a polyphonic symbol carrying the weight of centuries of societal anxiety. To the Marxist, he is the alienated, exploited proletariat, forced into existence by a capitalist system that extracts his value but fears his collective power. To the postcolonial scholar, he is the colonized subaltern, physically marked as the "Other" and violently marginalized by a hypocritical imperialist mindset. To the feminist, his tragic birth is a stark warning against the patriarchal desire to dominate nature and erase the necessity of the female role in reproduction and domestic care. To the ecocritic and the modern bioethicist, he is the ultimate "strange stranger," a hyperobject that forces humanity to confront the terrifying consequences of technological advancement from genetic engineering to Artificial Intelligence without an accompanying framework of moral responsibility and empathy.
By examining the creature's literary education, the reader is reminded of the sacred, unbreakable bond between creator and creation, and the devastating psychological toll of systemic isolation. Furthermore, by tracing the "Frankenpheme" through its various cinematic adaptations, from the psychological projections of early silent films to the localized folklore of Bollywood horror, it is evident that global society continuously uses this myth to process the anxieties of the modern world.
Ultimately, Frankenstein endures precisely because it asks a fundamental, unresolved question:
what happens when human ambition outpaces human compassion?
As long as society continues to innovate, push scientific boundaries, and create new forms of life and artificial intelligence, the shadow of Frankenstein's creature will remain, waiting in the ice, challenging humanity to recognize its own reflection in the monsters it builds.
Here is the Presentation of this blog:
- Guerin, Wilfred L., et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 6th ed., Oxford UP, 2011.
- Levine, George, and U. C. Knoepflmacher, editors. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. U of California P, 1979.
- Morton, Timothy. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: A Routledge Literary Sourcebook. Routledge, 2002.
- Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Edited by M. K. Joseph, Oxford UP, 1998.
- Smith, Johanna M. "'Cooped Up' with 'Sad Trash': Domesticity and the Sciences in Frankenstein." Frankenstein, edited by Johanna M. Smith, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000, pp. 313–33.
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism." Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, pp. 243–61.
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