Nothing is as it first appears. This is not simply a tale of a monster.

I was able to see not only her interpretation of sexist issues and the patriarchal system but also the presence of Christian symbolism in her writing.

The Symbolism:

• Victor Frankenstein ──► The Serpent. He isn’t tempted by a snake; he is the snake. Driven by hubris, he seduces himself with forbidden knowledge, crawls into the margins of science, decides to become God and create a man. This parallels satan’s desire to be like god. Victor then unleashes a curse that ruins his peaceful family paradise, paralleling the curse that was placed when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden.
• The Anti-Genesis Material: Victor doesn’t use clean earth. He goes to “charnel-houses,” graves, and slaughterhouses. He steals rotting flesh, severed limbs, and dead bones. In Genesis, God creates Adam out of “the dust of the ground”—clean, pure, natural earth. He then breathes life into him, making something beautiful and holy out of the living world.
• The Stitched-Together Creation: Victor literally sews death together to try to force life out of it.
• The First Laboratory ──► The Forbidden Fruit. The act of a mortal man trying to ‘create’ and bypass the womb, undergo a grueling “labour,” and play a patriarchal God. The result isn’t a perfect paradise, but a dark scenario with a monster and a trail of bodies.
• The Creature ──► The Nephilim / The Fallen Angel. The monstrous creation of Victor is the giant, unnatural offspring of a corrupted creator. This parallels the Nephilim – the monstrous, giant offspring of fallen angels and human women—an unnatural line of beings that corrupted the earth and forced God to send the Flood. Cast into the dark, Victor’s monster is denied a rightful place in the cosmic order, transforming from an intended “Adam” into a vengeful devil. Clearly evident in this line, when the Creature says, “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel,”. He is absolutely justifying the violence he committed against William. He is telling Victor: “You wanted to be God and create a perfect Adam. But because you cast me into the dark, you didn’t make a man—you made a Devil.”
• Little William ──► Abel. Victor loved his brother William. This love created intense hate, resentment, and jealousy in the monster. This parallels the Cain and Abel story. Victor’s monster killed Victor’s brother William. The monster was jealous of William – the favored, beautiful, golden child who receives the parental love and familial acceptance that the Creature was denied. Murdered by the monster, this parallels the bitter familial rivalry of Cain and Abel. Although William was not the monster’s brother, he was Victor’s brother – thus twisting the theme a bit – but metaphorically displaying the conflict.
• The Orkney Islands ──► The Anti-Eden. A cold, barren, desolate rock surrounded by a thrashing gray sea. The absolute sterile antithesis of the lush, fertile paradise of Eden—Orkney Islands were the location of Victor’s ‘lab’ – used to create the monster’s female companion. It was the only place that could symbolically represent where a creation born of hubris, death, hatred, and secrecy could be made.
• The Female Creature’s Autonomy ──► The Ultimate Patriarchal Terror. The panic that a female entity might choose her own path, reject a male companion, or propagate a new biological line entirely outside of male control. And he may have been terrified by the idea that he would be propagating a line of unnatural, corrupt versions of God’s creation like the Nephelim.
• Justine Moritz ──► The Scapegoat for the Fall. Because Victor is too cowardly to confess his sins, the patriarchal legal system executes an innocent girl for a war between brothers. The innocent woman whose false accusation and death are the exact opposite of the “Mark of Cain.” That is when God ‘marked’ Cain and protected him from being murdered – although punished into exile- made to carry the burden of the crime he committed.
• Elizabeth’s Murder ──► The Inverted Fall of Man. In Genesis, the woman brings about the Fall. Here, the Creature punishes Victor’s hubris by murders Victor’s bride on their wedding night in retaliation for Victor destroying the female counterpart he had made at Orkney for the monster. In retaliation for destroying the monster’s “Eve,” the Creature commits another murder – murdering as the Nephilim did.
• The Fall of Man ──► Eve brought about the fall of man by conspiring with the serpent/devil. Victor brought about the fall of man by defying God and began to ‘create’ man.