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A revolutionary classic of the horror genre that has inspired generations: why, more than two centuries later, is the message of Mary Shelley's novel, published in 1818, still overshadowed by its own success?
"He's alive! He's alive! He's alive!!!" — Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931).
One night during the unusually cold and wet European summer of 1816, a group of friends gathered at Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
"Each of us is going to write a ghost story," Lord Byron announced to those present, who included his doctor, John Polidori; the poet Percy Shelley; and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin - who would later adopt the surname Shelley - who was 18 years old at the time.
"I began to think of a story," she wrote, "one that would appeal to the deepest fears of our nature and awaken shocking horror."
That story ended up becoming a novel, published two years later under the title "Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus."
The work tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young student of natural philosophy who, driven by excessive ambition, manages to provide life to a body, but who, overcome by fear and disgust, ends up rejecting his terrifying "creature."
"Frankenstein" is, at the same time, the first science fiction novel, a work of gothic horror, a tragic romance and a parable, all integrated into a single, monumental whole.
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Its central tragedies—on the one hand, the dangers of "playing God"; On the other hand, parental abandonment and social rejection remain as relevant today as ever.
Part of the collective imagination
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Are there other fictional characters that are more deeply rooted in the popular imagination?
The two central archetypes brought to life by Mary Shelley—the “creature” and the wildly ambitious “mad scientist”—jumped from the page to the stage and the big screen, captivating theater and film audiences and becoming two of the most enduring icons, not only within the horror genre, but in all of film history.
"Frankenstein" gave rise to interpretations and parodies that go back to the very origins of cinema - with Thomas Edison's terrifying short film of 1910 -, through the productions of Universal Pictures in Hollywood and the British Hammer film series, until reaching The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It was also a precursor to works such as "2001: A Space Odyssey."
There are Italian and Japanese versions of "Frankenstein", and even a film in the blaxploitation genre (low-budget crime and action films) titled Blackenstein; For their part, filmmakers such as Mel Brooks, Kenneth Branagh and Tim Burton have offered their own visions.
Its characters and themes have appeared in - or have served as inspiration for - comics, video games, spin-off novels, television series and songs by artists as diverse as Ice Cube, Metallica or the group T'Pau, who in their song China in Your Hand says: "It was a flight on the wings of the dreams of a young girl / who got too far away... And we were able to make the monster come back to life."
In 2025, science fiction and horror film director Guillermo del Toro finally made his childhood dream of bringing "Frankenstein" to the big screen come true; a project created with true passion for more than 30 years.
As a parable, the novel has served as an argument both for and against slavery and revolution, vivisection and imperialism; Likewise, it has functioned as a dialogue between history and progress, religion and atheism.
The prefix "Franken-" has taken root in the modern lexicon as a synonym for any concern related to science, scientists and the human body; It has been used to articulate concerns about the atomic bomb, genetically modified crops, unusual foods, and stem cell research, and has served to both define and mitigate fears about artificial intelligence.
In the more than two centuries since Mary Shelley wrote the play, her story—in the words of the song Monster Mash, Bobby Pickett's 1962 hit (inspired, in turn, by Boris Karloff's performance)—has truly become an "over-the-grave hit" that "gained momentum in an instant."
"Mysterious fears of our nature"
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"All those scientists... they're all the same. They say they work for us, but what they really want is to dominate the world!" — Young Frankenstein (dir. Mel Brooks, 1974).
But why did Mary Shelley's vision of a "science going out of control" resonate so much at that time?
Without a doubt, he knew how to capture the spirit of his time: at the beginning of the 19th century, society was on the threshold of the modern era and, although the term "science" already existed, the concept of "scientist" did not yet exist.
Major social changes often generate fears that find expression through culture.
"Modernity brings with it a sense of anxiety about what human beings are capable of; in particular, an uneasiness about science and technology," says Fiona Sampson, author of "The Search for Mary Shelley."
"Frankenstein" fused, for the first time, these concerns of the time about the possibilities of science with fiction, achieving an electrifying result.
Far from being a completely far-fetched fantasy, the novel asked what might happen if people—and, in particular, scientists who overreach or lose control—go too far.
Several themes appear in the novel that were part of the popular intellectual debate of the 19th century.
Mary Shelley's writings reveal that, during that meeting at Villa Diodati in 1816, she and Lord Byron discussed the "principle of life."
At that time, there were intense debates about the nature of humanity and the possibility of resurrecting the dead.
In the preface to the 1831 edition, Mary Shelley mentions "galvanism" as one of her influences, referring to the experiments of Luigi Galvani, who used electrical currents to cause spasms in the legs of frogs.
In 1803, Galvani's nephew Giovanni Aldini went further by using the corpse of a recently executed murderer for his experiments.
Many of the doctors and thinkers who led these debates—such as the chemist Humphry Davy—were linked to Mary Shelley's father, the prominent intellectual William Godwin, who had formulated principles that warned of the dangers and moral implications of "going too far."
Despite these flashes of contemporary thought, there is hardly a tangible theory, method or scientific detail in “Frankenstein.”
The climactic moment of creation is described simply: "With an anxiety bordering on agony, I gathered around me the instruments of life, that I might instill a spark of existence into the inert being that lay at my feet."
The "science" of the novel is rooted in its time and yet timeless.
It is, therefore, so vague that it offers a malleable reference point for the moments of greatest change and fear of the next two centuries.
Monster Mix
But undoubtedly the reason why "Frankenstein" became a symbol of concerns about science lies in the impression that the "monster" and the "mad scientist" have left on the public.
How did this happen? Just as the science is vaguely described in the book, so is the description of the creature as it comes to life.
The moment is condensed into a single shocking image:
"It was already 1 in the morning; the rain was beating gloomily on the windows and my candle was about to burn out when, under the faint glow of the almost extinguished light, I saw the creature's dull yellow eye open; it was breathing with difficulty, and a convulsive movement shook its limbs."
With its "yellowish skin," "watery eyes," and "withered complexion," the creature is a far cry from the ideal of beauty that Victor Frankenstein had envisioned.
This sober but eloquent prose was irresistible for the theater—and, later, for cinema and its audience—as Christopher Frayling points out in his book "Frankenstein: The First 200 Years."
The shocking novel became a scandalous play and a smash hit, first in Britain and then abroad.
These early stage adaptations, Frayling writes, "set the tone for future dramatizations."
In them, the story was condensed into basic archetypes, incorporating many of the most memorable elements that audiences would recognize today: the comical lab assistant, the phrase "He's alive!" and a monster that barely speaks.
It is, perhaps, a double-edged sword that the enormous success of the Hollywood versions - particularly James Whale's 1931 film, starring Boris Karloff in the role of the creature -, although it largely guaranteed the durability of the story, ended up overshadowing, to a certain extent, Shelley's original version.
"'Frankenstein' [the film] created the definitive cinematic image of the mad scientist and, in the process, spawned countless imitations," Frayling writes.
"It fused a domesticated variant of expressionism, overacting, an irreverent adaptation of an established classic, the participation of European actors and visual artists—added to the tradition of American traveling fairs—to give rise to a properly American genre. It came to seem, in fact, that Hollywood had invented Frankenstein."
And thus a cinema legend was born.
And, in the same way that Hollywood selected elements of Mary Shelley's work to consolidate its own version, she herself had drawn on historical and biblical stories to create her own message and her own mythology.
The subtitle of the novel, "The Modern Prometheus", refers to the figure from Greco-Latin mythology who, according to various versions, steals fire from the gods to give it to humanity, and symbolizes the dangers of going beyond the permitted limits.
Another great allusion present in the novel refers to God and Adam; In fact, in the epigraph of the book a quote from "Paradise Lost" appears: "Did I ask you, Creator, to form me into a man from my clay?"
Arguably, it is precisely the creature's humanity—as well as its tragedy—that, in its various cinematic transformations into a mute but terrifying monster, has often been forgotten.
Shelley's monster
Shelley gave the creature a voice and a literary training so that he could express his thoughts and desires (he is one of the three narrators of the work).
Like Caliban in "The Tempest"—to whom Shakespeare gives a poetic and moving speech—the creature's lament is disturbing:
"Remember that I am your creature; I should be your Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom you expel from happiness without having committed any fault. Everywhere I see happiness, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was kind and good; misery turned me into an evil being. Make me happy and I will become virtuous again."
If the creature is perceived as a deformed human being, rather than a monster, its tragedy takes on greater depth.
He is first rejected by his creator—what Christopher Frayling called “that postpartum moment”—something often interpreted as parental abandonment.
If we take into account that Mary Shelley lost her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, at birth; that he had just buried his own daughter; and that he cared for his pregnant stepsister while writing the book - which took him exactly nine months to write - it is evident that birth (and death) are fundamental elements in the work.
The newborn child is further marginalized as society turns away from it in horror; His original nature was kind, but it is rejection that breeds his murderous vengeance.
It is a powerful allegory about the responsibility we have towards children, the marginalized or those who do not fit conventional canons of beauty.
"Sometimes we identify with Dr. Frankenstein - since we've all taken risks and we've all had moments of arrogance - but also, in part, with the creature; both represent facets of ourselves, of all that we are," says Fiona Sampson.
"They both talk to us about what it means to be human. And that's incredibly powerful."
But the empathy and humanity—which have often been lost at the core of Shelley's novel—are restored in the most recent adaptation.
Ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2025, director Guillermo del Toro told Variety that his version — starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature — is not so much a horror work as an exploration of "the genealogy of family pain," with Isaac playing an abusive father who abandons his son, the creature.
"He was an alien being. He didn't fit into the world. He felt out of place, the same way I felt as a child," del Toro said of the creature, also describing Shelley's story as a central element in his own life and work.
"'Frankenstein' is a hymn to the human experience... There is a lot of my own biography in the DNA of the novel."
Picking up a Bafta award in 2018 for another monster fable, The Shape of Water, del Toro thanked Shelley for inspiring him:
"She took up the drama of Caliban, gave weight to Prometheus' burden, gave voice to those who do not have one and presence to the invisible; she taught me that, sometimes, to talk about monsters we need to create our own monsters, and parables serve us for that."
It is almost inconceivable to think that when Mary Godwin—not yet called Shelley—conceived her chilling parable about monsters in that summer of 1816, she could have imagined that it would go on to influence culture, society, science, and fear so much, and that it would continue to spark debate—and produce works of art—well into the 21st century.
"And now, once more, I urge my hideous progeny to go forward and prosper," he wrote in the preface to the 1831 edition.
The creator and the creature, the progenitor and his offspring, the writer and her story moved on. And did they prosper?
More than 200 years after its publication, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is no longer just a "gripping horror" story, but a myth in itself, launched into the world.
*This is a Spanish adaptation of a BBC Culture story. If you want to read the original version in English, click here.
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