In 1816, “The Year Without a Summer”, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley spent an unseasonably morose and rainy season at Lord Byron’s. To pass the time, Byron suggested a storytelling contest: each participant would compose and share a tale of horror. Mary Shelley, according to her introduction to the 1831 text of Frankenstein, was the last to put forth a story. Hers would prove to be the most alarming, fascinating, gruesome, and lasting. Based upon a vision she had while lying in bed, it was a waking nightmare. She wrote that she saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. [She] saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out… [and] on the working of some powerful engine, show[ing] signs of life and stir[ring] with an uneasy, half-vital motion.” (Shelley, 8).

The Gothically-tinged origin story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has become nearly as famous as the construction of its Creature. The laboratory and lightning storm are so familiar that they are almost innocuous. But Frankenstein remains powerful. One need only look at the fact that it is routinely being adapted and inspiring other creators. From Boris Karloff’s Creature in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, to Rocky Horror Picture Show, to Poor Things, we have a wealth of adaptations to choose from. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein joins this cultural consciousness, in conversation with not just Shelley’s novel, but the adaptations that preceded it, and Gothic fiction as a whole.

In this analysis, I want to focus on the function of “the Other” in the film, and the distinction between Male and Female modes of Gothic storytelling as proposed by Anne Williams in her foundational book on the Gothic, Art of Darkness. Writing in the 1990’s, Williams argues that the Gothic is indistinguishable from the Romantic, and that it deserves just as much scholarly attention. The Gothic, she claims, is about more than just ghosts, ghouls, and scares, or the repeated use of stock settings and characters. Broadly speaking, I would say that it is simplest to instead identify the Gothic by its use of the uncanny, which, according to Freud, is the rendering of the familiar as strange (Williams, 46). Think of fun-house mirrors that distort your reflection. Or the haunted house: the familiar sanctuary of home made dangerous and otherworldly.

The uncanny can also be thought of as “the Other”, an elusive and amorphous concept. To oversimplify things, the Other is what the self is not. This can be an antagonistic, neutral, or benevolent force. In Gothic fiction, it is often supernatural and/or monstrous. There’s Stoker’s Dracula, Morrison’s Beloved, and, yes, Shelley’s (and Frankenstein’s) Creature. How a piece of fiction defines the Other (and how we relate to it) creates meaning. It determines what “the self” is, and what it isn’t.

Part of what delineates Male Gothic and Female Gothic for Williams is the relationship between the protagonist (typically the self which we are asked to identify with) and the Other. In Male Gothic fiction, the Other is something that must be conquered or destroyed (Williams, 145). Often feminine or feminized, the Other poses a threat to order and safety. The femme fatale is a clear modern incarnation of this trope, but there are many “other” examples to be found: Grendel’s Mother and the Evil Stepmother, to suggest a few monstrous mothers. In all of these cases, a figure that is already a threat to patriarchal supremacy (the feminine) is rendered inordinately powerful, possessive, and dangerous.

In Female Gothic, however, the Other is often masculine, which in itself is a revolutionary shift in perspective. But the greater difference lies in the fact that the Other is not something to be defeated in the Female Gothic, but understood. This narrative arc is why Female Gothic fiction often follows the structure of coming-of-age stories, unlike Male Gothic fiction, which are often tragedies (Williams, 103). It is also customary in Female Gothic stories for the supernatural to be discovered to be illusory or false. The (usually) female protagonist learns to trust in and accurately read reality, and ends her story able to confidently navigate her world and her relationship with Otherness (Williams, 172). Unsurprisingly, the Female Gothic is often dismissed as “wish-fulfillment” (as if the Male Gothic isn’t) and less worthy of academic attention. I do believe that this thinking has changed a great deal since Williams first put forth her theories surrounding modes of Gothic storytelling, but fully embracing the Female Gothic, and its radically different views on Otherness, remains an unachieved objective.

In practice, Gothic poetry and prose can rarely be neatly separated into one of the binary options of Male or Female. Rather, these story structures should be thought of as critical tools. As Frankenstein is a novel constantly in conversation with gender and our relationship to the Other, I find the framework proposed by Williams to be a useful means of analysis.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein does what nearly every Frankenstein adaptation does, and what most readers of the novel have done: sympathize with the Other.[1] The Creature is undoubtedly the most tangible Other, and, in the film, the Creature’s tale is not related by Frankenstein, as it is in the novel (he gives his recollection of the Creature’s story to Captain Walton). Instead, the Creature tells his own story, when he boards the vessel belonging to Captain Anderson.

The perspective of the Other is something del Toro has repeatedly emphasized in his work with craftsmanship, care, and nuance. He does not fall into the trap of sterilizing the Other, making it completely good and those opposed to it completely evil. To do so only reinforces binary systems of understanding that mark the Other as incomprehensible and utterly separate from the self. In del Toro’s Frankenstein, it’s more complex–and more interesting–than that.

So, in this analysis, I want to explore each major character’s relationship to Otherness, examining the decisions del Toro made while adapting Frankenstein, and the meaning those decisions might create. We’ll start with the eponymous character.

[1] Percy Bysshe Shelley, for whatever reason, is the exception. He claimed that Victor Frankenstein is the true victim of the novel (Karbiener, xxvii).

Victor

To explain my reading of Victor in the film, it’s best to begin with his family, which differs from the novel. Victor’s parents are opposites: his father is an abusive, coldly logical, and cruel physician, and his mother is saintly, tragic, and associated with religious iconography. In very different ways, both instill within Victor his ambition and purpose.

Victor’s mother is also a classic Gothic Other: belonging to a foreign noble family, she is marked different by appearance and language, and is “other”-worldly in her stunning red costume. Victor notes in his narrative that his father hated Victor’s and his mother’s “raven-dark hair and…deep, dark eyes,” indicating that their Otherness is also linked to race and ethnicity[1] (Frankenstein, 12:56). This Otherness creates a bond between Victor and his mother, and her death leaves him alone in the world. Victor’s mother dies in the same way that Mary Shelley’s mother died: from complications in childbirth. Victor’s mother’s death is the impetus for his desire to “conquer” death (and, in creating life, reenacting his mother’s death).

Del Toro’s Victor differs from Shelley’s Victor in key ways, the most pertinent to this analysis being his clear attachment to the Other. He isn’t at all squeamish in his work, and specifically references a fascination with the dark and macabre. Most importantly, rather than running from his creation in revulsion, as he does in the novel, Victor initially tries to teach and mold him. But Victor for the majority of the film still views the Other, ultimately, as Other: something lesser and separate from himself, which he wants to exert his own will and beliefs upon. And yet, he quickly grows tired of maternal responsibility, fearful of the Creature’s strength, and jealous of the Creature for his bond with Elizabeth.

Victor’s anxieties concerning the Other closely follow the structure of the Male Gothic. The Other is associated with the feminine (Victor’s mother, the Dark Angel, Elizabeth, and the Creature (stick with me, I’ll explain)). The Other is also a threat to patriarchal power: Victor’s supremacy is called into question by the Creature’s physical strength. This is not Oedipal, however (at least on the Creature’s part) because the Creature has no ambition to usurp Victor. Victor, on the other hand, closely follows the Oedipal plotline. He assumes the role of his father, treating the Creature in the same brutal manner he was treated, while experiencing an attraction to Elizabeth, who is, by no coincidence, played by the same actress who plays his mother.

When Victor is unable to mold the Creature’s mind in the way he would like, he considers his experiment a failure and sets the Gothic castle in which he created the Creature ablaze. I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest a biblical reading here, where Victor is a sort of Old Testament God that exiles his creation from a sanctuary. The choice of destruction via fire is significant, and undeniably Satanic (and Promethean, of course), further complicating things. As has often been noted, the Creature can be read as a parallel to both Lucifer and Adam. But I would argue that del Toro’s Victor can be read as both God and Lucifer: loathing his father, attempting to claim a role that is not his (the role of the mother (and creator)), called blasphemous in his ambition to create life. In both of their parallels to the Lucifer of Paradise Lost, the Creature and Victor are doubles who cannot easily be separated. Their identities blur with one another, just as their fates are intertwined. A popular reading of Frankenstein posits that Victor and the Creature are two halves of the same being, at war with itself (Karbiener, xvii). That is, the conscious mind battling the shadowy unconscious: the Other that exists within.

Victor imposes and believes in this binary. It is what he has been taught, and what he replicates. But just before he dies, Victor reevaluates his conception of the Other as “other”, acknowledging the Creature as his son (Frankenstein, 2:16:49). While upholding the structure of lineage, this action is complicated by an inversion of roles, as the Creature “gives” Victor his name as a parent might their child, saying it to him one final time (Frankenstein, 2:17:59). Victor’s “victor”-y is given only when he has reconciled with and accepted the Other as belonging to him, inverting the archetypal journey of the Male Gothic.

[1] A point that isn’t made nearly often enough in criticism of the Gothic.

The Creature

The ultimate Other, the Creature is the most familiar thing possible (a human being) rendered uncanny, and (according to nearly every character in the film) unsettling. The inescapable isolation the Creature experiences is emphasized more in the novel, from the moment Victor abandons the Creature at his birth. This makes his request for a companion, in my opinion, more impactful in the novel, because he has never experienced any form of connection with a being like him before. But in the film, he finds moments of connection with Elizabeth, the Blind Man, and Victor. Del Toro’s vision of the world—and the Creature’s fate—is still tragic and dark, but ultimately more optimistic than Shelley’s, because of the potential for fulfillment and belonging that it suggests.[1]

Interestingly, there are many ways that the Creature’s journey contains elements of the Female Gothic (told you I’d explain this). The Creature’s seemingly inherently gentle, kind, and at times passive nature are all stereotypically feminine. His powerlessness in his circumstances certainly is. And, like many a Gothic heroine, he is trapped in an ancient castle when he is first created, and is thrown into a world which he does understand, and which fails to understand him. But I think the most significant reason the Creature’s story in the film more closely resembles the Female Gothic than the Male is because del Toro’s film proposes identification with the Other, along with the potential for hope and rebirth. This stands in direct contrast to the implied (or at least longed for) death of the Creature at the end of Shelley’s novel. The Creature instead undergoes a process of self-actualization, coming to terms with and forgiving both his creator and himself, freeing them both from a cycle of violence and hatred.

Anne Williams argues that the Female Gothic can be understood through a reading of the myth of Eros and Psyche (147). In the story, Psyche must overcome several impossible tasks, and is able to do so only by accepting help from and cooperating with various Others in the natural world (ants, reeds, and an eagle). Like Psyche, the Creature triumphs not thanks to violence, but despite it. As in the novel, the Creature’s goal is never to remake the world in his image (the objective of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, a character to whom the Creature compares himself). It is never to triumph over and discover the secrets of nature (the objective of his creator). The Creature only wants to know who he is and find a companion like himself. The moments of mutual understanding and connection the Creature finds—however incomplete, however brief—are not present in the novel. Del Toro does something absolutely radical in his film: suggest that to be Other is not necessarily to be alone.

[1] Mostly unrealized, but nonetheless there.

Elizabeth

This is best shown through del Toro’s demonstration of mutual understanding between two Others: the Creature (the embodiment of Otherness) and Elizabeth (a woman, that most archetypal Other). Though Elizabeth has a larger and more significant role in the film than she does in the novel, she still resembles the Elizabeth found in both the 1818 and 1831 editions of Frankenstein. She is deeply moral, intelligent, and, for the film’s male characters, a “heaven-sent” being (Shelley, 30). These traits mark Elizabeth as “other”-worldly, and result in a disconnection from the world and those she shares it with. This experience of not being properly seen by other people does not make those people “Other” to Elizabeth; rather, it causes her to internalize her Otherness, making her all the more cognizant of her difference. All of this is undoubtedly influenced by gender, but I think it would be an oversimplification to read Elizabeth as Other only because she is a woman. Rather, it is her hyper-awareness of her powerlessness, of her fate as a woman in the Victorian era, that marks her as distinctly Other.

This is brought to the forefront by the fact that every other character fails to accurately “read” the Creature, while Elizabeth feels a kinship with him. Her fascination with insects, creatures that are usually either ignored or reviled, likewise points to her sympathetic understanding of the Other, while also serving as a contrast to Victor’s scientific ambitions. While Victor attempts to conquer, Elizabeth, just like the Creature, only wants to understand and find belonging. It reminds me of a very famous, very beautiful James Baldwin quote:

“There is reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon and others dance before it as an ancient friend.”

The parallel to Eros and Psyche, a precursor to Beauty and the Beast, is immediately clear in Elizabeth’s and the Creature’s relationship. Both of these plots involve a union with and understanding of the Other, with the female heroine discovering and accepting her own Otherness.  Unlike these stories, however, Elizabeth does not get a “happily ever after”. She sacrifices herself to save the Creature, an act made doubly tragic because she is unaware that the Creature would have survived a gunshot wound, as he does many times in the film. Elizabeth spends her last breaths asking the Creature to take her with him, which he does, only for her to die shortly after (Frankenstein, 2:05:35).

The bond between Elizabeth and the Creature is brief, but powerful. It is the heart of the film, and is best summarized by some of Elizabeth’s final lines: “To be lost and to be found, that is the lifespan of love” (Frankenstein, 2:07:31). Drawing upon a history of Gothic romances, I think del Toro gets at why Frankenstein is adapted again and again. I’ll explain, as I conclude.

“Forgive Yourself into Existence”

I came across a pretty wise meme recently. It showed a crowd of stick figures on public transportation, each thinking, “I must lack something that makes you human.”

The internal Other, it would seem, is universally understood, and del Toro’s Frankenstein is the ultimate sympathetic Gothic. Giving us the perspective of the Creature in his own words and ending with a moment of harmony between the Other and our strange world, what is lost is found. Forgiving Victor for giving him existence, the Creature is able to forgive himself too, for his loathed Otherness and the violence that created and consumed him. The Creature finds the companionship that he needs within himself, and his memories of connection with Others. Basking in sunlight, he remembers one of Victor’s first lessons: “The sun is life” (Frankenstein, 1:04:33). This is a far more affirmative ending than the novel’s, which also ends in forgiveness and Victor’s death, but without much hope for the Creature. We aren’t sure if he is able to die, but he is certainly keen on it. Here, however, he has no “recourse…but to live” (Frankenstein, 2:17:15).

It could be argued that there is still little hope for The Creature. The film has shown again and again that the Creature is reviled as an Other on sight. But I think this ignores the fact that, when characters choose to listen to him, they discover their fear was misplaced. They discover that the Other is understandable, sympathetic, and not unlike them. This is Victor’s arc in the film and the lesson he imparts. After listening to both of their stories, Captain Anderson lets the Creature go, to live. He learns from Victor’s and the Creature’s tales that he should not place ambition over human life, and decides to journey home with his crew. Should we listen, del Toro suggests, we can learn to understand others and accept ourselves.

In listening to the Creature’s tale, in every form it has taken, the audience’s preconceptions concerning Otherness are reformed, just like those of the characters who hear his story. I think that this is the appeal of Frankenstein, and every adaptation of it: the possibility of understanding the Other, and therefore being understood ourselves.

We are, all of us, Other, and it is only in our feelings of confusion, inadequacy, and difference that we can ever hope to connect: to our world, to our fellow creatures, and to ourselves. From my reading, del Toro’s film’s ultimate message is this: it is time for the Other to step out of the shadows, and feel the sun upon its face.

Works Cited

del Toro, Guillermo, writer & director. Frankenstein. Netflix, 2025.

Karbiener, Karen. Introduction. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, 2003, Barnes & Noble, Incorporated, pp. xiii-xxxi.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York, Barnes & Noble, Incorporated, 2003.

Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995.