Book versus film: How the latest ‘Frankenstein’ adaptation tackles masculinity

Caution: Heavy spoilers ahead about Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s classic novel from 1818, has been dissected for its Gothic atmosphere, its philosophy, its questions about scientific responsibility and much more.

In the story, Victor Frankenstein stitches together a body from different human beings and brings it to life through electricity, only to abandon what he has made. His experiment is driven by a kind of “masculine” ambition: Victor’s fixation on his experiment is entirely about achieving his goal, with no thought for what he would do once his creation is alive.

Guillermo del Toro’s screen adaptation, which was recently released on Netflix, brings this masculinity, how it loves, how it fails, and what it destroys when tenderness and “feminine” modes of thought are not taken into account, into sharper focus.

In Shelley’s novel, the reader’s sympathy keeps on shifting towards the Creature as the story progresses. Del Toro keeps that tilt but sharpens the tenderness.

By altering Victor’s backstory, del Toro emphasises on the core idea of Shelley’s book that there is no biologically feminine element in the Creature’s birth and no humanity associated with the thought process behind it.

This is where the story offers a lesson in the importance of a feminist thought process.

Reading Shelley and del Toro together makes it clear how much of Victor’s downfall comes from the value system he represents, which is the patriarchal belief that creation is an act of achievement and not care.

Feminist thinking is based on the ideas of responsibility, collaboration, emotional awareness and an understanding of consequences before action. Victor rejects all of these.

His decisions are unilateral and driven by ego. In a way, the story becomes a reflection of the limits of patriarchal style of thinking and how easily things turn “monstrous” when tenderness is absent.

Victor’s thoughtlessness turns into neglect. He grows irritated with the very being he carved with such care. With the shift in backstory in del Toro’s version, the film shows how the cycle of neglect traverses generations.

In the book, Victor grows up in a “normal” and affluent family. In the film, Victor (Oscar Isaac) grows up under a cruel and punishing father and the grief of losing his mother fuels his desire to conquer death.

Instead of mourning, Victor turns grief into a technical challenge, a pattern patriarchy often rewards. That early “masculine” lesson of detachment and “discipline” becomes an inheritance and the foundation on which Victor’s choices are built.

Midway through the film, Victor tells his brother’s fiance Elizabeth in frustration: “The creature knows but one word, one word alone.”

“Victor, Victor, Victor, Victor… Parrots it without rhyme or reason,” he says.

She tells him then: “Perhaps for the time being that word means everything to him.”

Elizabeth (Mia Goth) becomes a stand-in for the ethical lens Victor has abandoned in the film, a way of seeing the Creature not through fear but through recognition, a literal “feminine” perspective that lets her observe him through nature and instinct rather than threat perception.

Del Toro also does not dilute Shelley’s idea that monstrosity comes from what society sees as the difference. (Recent good examples of this are Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and the “Wicked Witch” Elphaba in Wicked).

The Creature’s longing for connection is similar to the experiences of those marginalised because of their gender, sexual orientation, disability among others.

Victor stands on the other side of this lens. He treats creation as a project, not a responsibility which is another consequence of the patriarchal thought process where building or fixing something matters more than imagining the consequences of the exercise.

Later in the film, when Victor tries to kill the Creature, he hits him cruelly and demands proof of his intelligence. The moment mirrors Victor’s own childhood, when his father struck him for failing to remember his lessons. The violence becomes inherited behaviour.

The confrontation on the night of William and Elizabeth’s wedding shows the same pattern.

The Creature’s petition for a companion is not about creating another “monster”, it is a plea for relief from loneliness. Victor treats it as a threat. When the being he created stands before him asking for help, he abandons him, again.

The rage that follows has already been set up. “If you are not to award me love then I will indulge in rage,” the Creature says.

This is also the first moment in the film where the Creature becomes violent. Del Toro makes it clear that the Creature’s violence comes from pain, and is not a part of the story to create a spectacle.

Here, a parallel can be drawn with Sandeep Vanga Reddy’s Animal (2023).

In a much-discussed scene, Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor) hits son Ranvijay (Ranbir Kapoor) after Ranvijay brings a gun to his sister’s college following a complaint of harassment. This is physical abuse as a form of punishment from a father whose emotional neglect has perhaps pushed the son to an extreme.

However, Ranvijay is convinced that he did what he had to because he is “the man in charge”. In Animal, the complicated father-son relationship is presented as the trigger for Ranvijay’s rage, but the “animal” side of the protagonist is just who he is, rather than the result of neglect.

There is also no feminine lens in the film, no character who watches Ranvijay the way Elizabeth observes Victor.

Elizabeth recognises the Creature’s innocence and, more importantly, she also holds Victor accountable for his cruelty and indifference. In Animal, no such counterpoint exists. No one names Ranvijay’s violence for what it is, no one interrupts it and no one offers an alternative way of being.

And this is the difference.

Art that attempts to build its characters within a frame of morality adds dimension to them. Animal does the opposite. It asks the viewer to be impressed by Ranvijay’s violence. There is always a justification for his behaviour.

In del Toro’s Frankenstein, every act of violence circles back to grief or abandonment – whether by the Creature or the eponymous character himself.

When seen through a feminist lens, it is a critique of patriarchal storytelling, which assumes a wounded man is automatically fascinating and that violence is a legitimate expression of hurt.

Del Toro shows how the opposite is true.

The Creature is a wounded being who longs to be seen and who becomes violent only when dismissed. In his story, masculinity is something to unlearn. It is not celebrated or shoved in the audience’s face.

The “monster” retains the capacity for recognition and love despite the abandonment.

And in the final confrontation between the Creature and his creator, recognition and accountability finally break the cycle of generational harm.

At the end of the film, which is also the end of Victor’s life, the two finally meet without fear or rage. For the first time since bringing the Creature to life, Victor faces him with honesty and remorse. The Creature, who has spent the entire story longing for recognition, responds with forgiveness.

The film, departing from Shelley’s ending, concludes with the Creature walking towards the rising sun, which Victor had earlier described as “life”.

It acknowledges that without letting go of pain, misunderstanding and the cycles inherited from patriarchal harm, there is no way forward.

Also read

‘Frankenstein’ review: Grand visuals and a gentle Creature