Frankenstein

Frankenstein is the title character in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), the prototypical “mad scientist” who creates a monster by which he is eventually killed. The name Frankenstein has become popularly attached to the creature itself, one of the best-known monsters in literature and the history of motion pictures.

Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a combination of Gothic horror story and science fiction. The book tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science who creates an artificial man from pieces of corpses and brings his creature to life. Though it initially seeks affection, the monster inspires loathing in everyone who meets it. Lonely and miserable, the monster turns upon its creator, who eventually loses his life.

The scientist and his monstrous creation

Victor Frankenstein is first mentioned in the novel as a haggard and nearly frozen figure spotted by the captain and crew of a ship that has become bogged down by ice during a voyage to the North Pole. He is rescued and befriends the captain, Robert Walton, to whom he relates his life story.

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He describes an idyllic childhood as the firstborn of a wealthy family. In his youth, Frankenstein planned to study at the university in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, but his departure was delayed by his mother’s death. Once in Ingolstadt, Frankenstein impressed his professors with his intensive work ethic. During this period, he unraveled the mysteries of life and death and set his mind to animating a creature in a human likeness, albeit on a gargantuan scale. His frenetic pursuit of this goal left no room for thought for his family or even his own health. He plundered graves and morgues with a dispassionate eye, seeing only components for his future creation, and he heartlessly employed vivisection for his experiments.

Then, “on a dreary night of November” at one o’clock in the morning, Frankenstein imbued his humanlike creation with the spark of life. But at the sight of the unnatural creature, the scientist fled. Not long afterward, Frankenstein suffered a nervous breakdown stemming from the memories of his experiment. Later he received a letter from his father relating the murder of Victor’s youngest brother, William. While on his journey back home, Frankenstein spotted the monster on a mountainside and became convinced that his creation was his brother’s killer. But when he arrived home, he found that all evidence pointed to a family friend, Justine, who was soon executed for the murder. Nevertheless, Frankenstein was wracked with guilt, knowing that he had created the true murderer but that no one would believe him.

Not long afterward, Frankenstein again came into contact with the monster and attempted to attack his creation before deciding to hear out the creature’s tale. The monster, after his inception, had survived in the woods with little knowledge of the world. He ventured toward villages for shelter, but people chased him away with fear and violence. He hid in a hovel by a small cottage, where a poor family lived and was teaching a foreigner how to speak and read French. The monster followed these lessons, growing in knowledge but also in love for the family. Finally, the monster decided to reveal himself to the cottage’s inhabitants and appeal to their compassion. Disgusted and shocked by his appearance, one of the family members attacked him. Enraged by the rejection, the monster made humanity his enemy and set his mind on revenge.

The monster sought out Frankenstein, his creator, to right the injustices he faced as an outcast. On the outskirts of Geneva, the monster encountered a child whom he believed he could kidnap and raise not to fear him. But as he grappled with the boy, the monster learned that the child was a Frankenstein. Consequently, he delighted in strangling the boy—William—and he planted evidence of the crime on Justine.

At the end of his tale, the monster asked Frankenstein to create a female counterpart to the monster so that he would no longer suffer alone. Frankenstein reluctantly agreed after the monster swore to leave Europe with his mate and never return. During a tour of England and Scotland with his friend Henry Clerval, Frankenstein secretly gathered and prepared materials for his second creation. Later he hid in a hut on the remote Orkney Islands to complete the new creature.

But then Frankenstein had second thoughts. He considered that the female monster might not willingly follow her counterpart away from Europe, and he feared the monsters’ possible proliferation, which could result in a race that threatened all of humanity. Then, seeing the monster at the hut’s window, grinning devilishly, Frankenstein tore apart the inanimate female body. Swearing revenge, the monster fled. Frankenstein then dumped the female monster’s remains in the ocean. When he returned to land, he was arrested for murder and was shown the cadaver of the victim: Clerval.

After his father’s intervention, Frankenstein was cleared in court, and he returned to Geneva to marry his betrothed, Elizabeth Lavenza. Immediately after their wedding, however, the monster murdered her. Unable to bear the tragedy, Frankenstein’s father also soon died. Frankenstein then plunged into a stretch of insanity so severe that later he could not recall any moment of it. Once recovered, the scientist, too, focused on revenge.

Frankenstein tracked the monster to the sea of ice around the North Pole. The monster sometimes left hints and taunts to ensure his creator’s pursuit. As Frankenstein drew closer, the ice beneath him suddenly ruptured and left him and his sledge adrift. Just then he happened upon Walton’s ship. He concludes his history to the captain with a plea: If he should die before realizing his revenge, Walton must take any opportunity to slay his enemy.

Frankenstein’s health continues to decline, and the crew persuades Walton to turn the ship back south toward England. As Frankenstein succumbs to his illness, he repeats his plea to Walton with his last words.

Then, hearing a voice in Frankenstein’s quarters, Walton discovers the monster hovering over the dead scientist. Walton is horrified at the monster’s appearance, but he composes himself and chastises the monster for the violence and heartlessness of his actions. The monster responds by lamenting his wretched state of loneliness and the immense guilt he feels for the murders he committed in revenge. He feels that the death of Frankenstein, his final victim, means his work is complete. Wanting to end his mental anguish, he tells Walton that he will ride to the farthest point north and burn himself, so that no person can ever find his remains and manufacture another monster. Then he disappears into the cold and darkness.

Character influences: Romanticism and the Enlightenment

Shelley’s novel was published during the second wave of Romanticism in Great Britain. That movement’s focus on subjectivity and the emotions of the individual are apparent in both Victor Frankenstein and his monster. Frankenstein is prone to intense bouts of despondency, his anxieties rendering him catatonic for months on end. Yet time spent with his loved ones or in the great expanse of European nature, which the novel describes with great vividness, induces feelings of elation in the young scientist. The monster, having lived outdoors for a significant period of his short lifetime, views nature more as an obstacle. However, he offers profound reflections on humanity from an outsider’s perspective, moved by people’s compassion and repulsed by their violence. Overflowing fits of rage, made fearsome by the monster’s physicality, belie his youth and naivete.

Another component of the Romantic movement was philhellenism, an interest in Greek culture and the aesthetic of Classical antiquity. With its subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, Shelley’s novel invokes Greek mythology by referring to the Titan who created mortals out of clay and is associated with the divine power of fire. In addition, Frankenstein is first enraptured by the writings of St. Albertus Magnus, a German theologian who promoted the theories of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Furthermore, the monster fits the archetype of the “noble savage,” a Romantic convention with roots in ancient Greek literature that portrays an inherent good nature in uncivilized characters. The monster begins life as innocent as a child but is quickly corrupted by the violence in society.

The Enlightenment was an era that belonged more to the generation preceding Shelley’s, but that movement also influenced her novel. The Enlightenment valued reason, freedom, and skepticism. Frankenstein and his friend Clerval are both scholars who are committed to the pursuit of knowledge. In their characterization, Shelley may have been critiquing Enlightenment ideology, since it is Frankenstein’s unrestrained appetite for progress that ultimately results in his own destruction.

Frankenstein’s monster is considered by some to be an allegory for the French Revolution of 1789, whose early leaders were influenced by Enlightenment philosophy. French writers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau spread the ideals of liberty and equality, envisioning a rational societal structure instead of what they condemned as the arbitrary rule of the monarchy and nobility. Although the revolution began with a desire to improve upon society by using reason, it quickly devolved into rampant bloodlust that consumed even some of its leading figures.

Adaptations

The first Frankenstein film was produced by Thomas Edison in 1910. Two German films, The Golem (1914) and Homunculus (1916), dealt with a similar theme derived from Jewish folklore. The Hollywood film Frankenstein (1931), with Boris Karloff as the monster, was based as much on The Golem as on Shelley’s novel. This film, directed by James Whale, was a great success and was followed by dozens of variations on the Frankenstein story in films such as Whale’s sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), a Japanese-made version. The character of the monster has also been used as a vehicle for easy humor—as in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974).

List of actors who played Victor Frankenstein

Among the many actors who have played the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein, or a similar character, are:

• Augustus Phillips in Frankenstein (1910)
• Colin Clive in Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
• Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein (1939)
• Cedric Hardwicke in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
• Peter Cushing in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
• Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Sting in The Bride (1985)
• Raul Julia in Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
• Kenneth Branagh in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
• Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch in Frankenstein (2011; play)
• Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein (2025)
• Annette Bening in The Bride! (2026)

List of actors who played Frankenstein’s monster

Among the actors who have played Frankenstein’s creature, or a similar character, are:

• Charles Ogle in Frankenstein (1910)
• Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939)
• Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
• Bela Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
• Glenn Strange in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
• Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
• Fred Gwynne in The Munsters (1964–66; TV series)
• Koji Furuhata in Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)
• John Maxim in season two of Doctor Who (1965; TV series)
• Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Nick Brimble in Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
• Robert De Niro in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
• Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch in Frankenstein (2011; play)
• Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein (2025)
• Christian Bale in The Bride! (2026)

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