A Gothic Triumph
November 2026
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is a Gothic triumph and continues to be over 200 years later. Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of this masterpiece might be considered his best film (I loved it in many ways), but the adaptation is a disappointment because it does not remain faithful to Mary’s story.
For the book purists who have read and re-read the novel (as I have), the film is more of a reinvention or even a modernization of the madly ambitious Victor and his creature. The film might rightly be termed redefined Gothic horror.
I couldn’t help but see stark differences between the book and film.
In the film, the benefactor Henrich Harlander is a new character who has his own selfish agenda with Victor. Okay, I’m good with that intrigue. In the novel, Henry Clerval is Victor’s endearing friend, and I did miss that relationship being deleted from the film. Justine is another character with her own compelling story (murder, trial, and execution) eliminated that I missed.
Mary portrayed Victor’s father as a kindly, intelligent gentleman exhibiting sympathy and family love, not the authoritarian abuser in the film. While this creative liberty added a layer to the film’s backstory tension, I was not fond of making Victor’s father so odious as to be completely opposite of the character Mary had designed.
The most radical change in the film is the subplot of Victor’s younger brother William (a child throughout the novel) and Henrich’s niece Elizabeth (in the novel, she is Victor’s adopted sister and romantic interest). Del Toro completely fabricates this new storyline into a romance between William, a grown man, with the lust-worthy Elizabeth. William and Elizabeth are engaged and then marry.
Elizabeth has her own questionable intentions. She provokes a seductive triangle between William, Victor, and the creature. And while this action is well nested into the plot, I thought it came off messy and inappropriate, especially because the novel’s Elizabeth is innocent and endearing, devoted to Victor, and marries him. Del Toro’s Elizabeth is completely contrary to Mary’s Elizabeth.
There are a number of other changes, which I won’t identify here so as not to create spoilers. The endings are vastly different. Mary’s story ends in deep darkness, despair, and distance, while the film ties it all up too neatly beneath tarnished sunlight.
Did I enjoy the film? Yes, it’s a cinematic feast of mystery, madness, passion, and obsession: a panoramic dazzle with lush scenes, magnificent costuming, and vast landscapes in Gothic beauty and desolation. Yes, there are lots of criticisms of the computer-generated images (the wolves scene for sure), but I’m not offended by cinematic liberties when they are done well. In all of the 2 hours and 29 minutes, I was never bored or distracted watching this juicy spectacle.
I must say, though, read Mary’s novel for sure! Her story is a brilliant weave of intimate perspectives. Her fine prose streams with meaning that only literature can reveal. You will explore deep psychological themes of arrogance, ambition, isolation, love, death, loss, and destruction. The symbolism in her lyrical narrative is not to be missed.
Mary began the story from a “fever dream” in 1816 and completed the manuscript a year later in 1817.
The first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818 because Mary’s publisher said no one would buy a novel written by a woman. The book earned no royalties and didn’t achieve fame until after the second edition. https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-1818-Text-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143131842
In 1823, her name appears on the second edition.
In the Introduction of the 1831 revised edition, Mary writes about the dream that inspired her to write Frankenstein, while in Geneva.
Night waned. “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.”
The full text is in the public domain at Gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42324/42324-h/42324-h.htm
I highly recommend Mary’s Monster, Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge. This is her biography in verse. “Darkly evocative . . . Brings life to Mary Shelley’s story the way that Shelley herself breathed life into her novel of a scientist who animates a corpse.” ―Kirkus Reviews.
I can also personally recommend Mary’s novella, Matilda, which is heart-wrenching as it is extraordinary in art and language. This book, written in 1819, was published posthumously in 1959 because Mary’s father hid it for years. When you read this 100-page story, you’ll know why.
The opening of the story sets the mood of a young woman contemplating suicide.
“It is only four o’clock; but it is winter and the sun has already set: there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground.”
Matilda will haunt you long after you close the book.
Thank you for stopping by! Please leave a comment. I would very much like to know your thoughts about Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.
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