One of the most striking aspects of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the absolute aloneness of the Creature. Reviled instinctually by everyone he encounters, Shelley’s Creature is rejected first by his creator, and then by everyone with whom he comes into contact. Throughout the text, he has a conversation with only three people: Victor Frankenstein, the blind M. De Lacey, and Walton, at the novel’s closing. In film adaptations, however, we backtrack on the Creature’s aloneness. In the 1931 James Whale film, it is not Frankenstein, but his lab assistant Fritz, who rejects the Creature, and in its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, one of the first words the Creature learns is “Friend.”
More recent iterations socialize the Creature even further: in Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), Walton invites the Creature to return to civilization with his crew, rather than face a lonely death in the Arctic; in Van Helsing (2004), the Creature wishes for isolation but collaborates with the film’s hero to defeat Dracula; in Showtime’s series Penny Dreadful (2014-present), the Creature has a hostile relationship with Victor, but finds kindness at the hands of an old theatrical gentleman (in season one) and a tentative friendship with protagonist Vanessa Ives (in season two). 2014’s I, Frankenstein goes so far as to make the Creature into an action hero.
What is it that has created this change in the Creature’s status? What is it that makes us so incapable of imagining this utter aloneness – is it our hyperconnected modern era? A cultural disbelief, true or not, that we could be so unkind to an outcast? Or simply the practicalities of film? In this paper, I will explore these possibilities, and what isolation, or its lack, means in the Frankenstein mythos.
About the presenterCatherine Siemann
Catherine Siemann is the Writing Center Director at NJIT. She has a Ph.D. in 19th century British literature from Columbia University. She has published on Victorian literature, steampunk, and popular culture. Interests include science fiction, Victorian and Romantic literature, popular culture, writing center studies, and composition studies.