Character list

Victor Frankenstein He is the main character, a man driven by ambition and scientific curiosity. His quest for absolute knowledge and power will eventually end in his own ruin. Elizabeth Lavenza Both Victor’s sister and his bride. Elizabeth is presented as being angelically good and incomparably beauty: she represents ideal womanhood and its promises of … Read more

Appearance in movies

In 1910, Thomas Edison’s silent film company created a 20-minute adaptation of the story of Frankenstein. His monster was played by Charles Stanton Ogle. He was wrapped in rags, had exaggeratedly pointed feet and fingers, a wild wig of hair, and boldly open eyes and eyebrows painted in lines reminiscent of a kabuki actor. However, … Read more

Frankenstein influence on art and society

The concept of the ‘mad scientist’ creating a creature/monster/weapon that eventually falls out of his control, leading to the scientist’s eventual defeat or ruin, is a common narrative trope in science-fiction / horror tales. For example, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde also features a scientist destroyed by a … Read more

The Frankenstein Complex

In Isaac Asimov’s robot novels, the Frankenstein complex is a colloquial term for the fear of robots. Asimov’s stories predict that the phobia will be widespread against machines that resemble people . It is similar in many respects to the uncanny valley hypothesis which was first coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori . … Read more

Frankenstein Psychology

As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional creature whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrays him as immensely intelligent and literate, having read Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. He is driven by despair and loneliness to acts … Read more

The Summer of 1816 at Villa Diodoti

Mary Shelley spent the greater part of the summer of 1816, when she was nineteen, at the Chapuis in Geneva, Switzerland. The entourage included her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, Byron’s physician. Lord Byron rented the Villa Diodoti on the shores of Lake Geneva, which John Milton, the author of Paradise … Read more

Plays of Frankenstein

Frankenstein is best known today through the many films based on the novel, although the most famous movie Frankenstein came after more than a century of popular stage adaptations. As early as 1823, Frankenstein had been adapted for the stage: Peake’s Presumption appeared on the stage only five years after Mary Shelley’s novel was published. … Read more