Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains one of the most enduring works of Gothic literature, a story filled with dark symbolism, tragic characters, and timeless warnings about human ambition. Written out of her own grief, abandonment, and struggles, the novel blends horror with philosophy, raising questions about science, morality, and the consequences of “playing God.” Victor Frankenstein’s creation is more than a monster. It is a mirror of Mary Shelley’s own pain, her feelings of neglect, and her exploration of a world where God seemed absent. Frankenstein is not only a Gothic ghost story but also a profound meditation on abandonment, sin, and the dangers of unchecked ambition.

My favorite genre, Gothic Literature (known for supernatural forces and creatures, damsels in distress, dark or haunted houses, religious, moral, and political symbolism, and anti-heroes) saw its rise in the Victorian era.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an intellectual exploration of abandonment, neglect, and the perils of “playing God” through scientific advancement, that parallel aspects of the author’s own tragic life and her sense of neglect by her father. Dr. Frankenstein creates his “Creature” and gives him life, but abandons him in disgust when he realizes what he has done, leaving a soulless creature to wander alone, raging against the injustice of his solitary state. In his anger, he seeks to destroy his own creator.

Tragedy, Abandonment, and Early Feminism

To understand Frankenstein, first we must learn about its author. Mary Godwin-Shelley lived a tragic life, surrounded by death, losses of other kinds (reputation, income, society), and suicide (several people close to her, including her sister). She waved the banner of early feminism and suffered because of it.

In 1972, her mother, the idealistic author Mary Wollstonecraft, promoted early feminism in her book The Vindication of the Rights of Women. For her time, she led a scandalous life by living with men outside of marriage, including William Godwin. They married only to legitimize their daughter, Mary, because her mother did not want her to suffer in society. Wollstonecraft died soon after her daughter’s birth, but her daughter embraced her parents’ progressive views. She fell in love with Percy Shelley, a married poet and author, and ran away with him.

They were forced into a nomadic lifestyle to avoid the scandal and to avoid hotel bills. Far from accepting her progressive lifestyle as she thought he would, her father refused to associate with her, while still begging her to ask Shelley to help him with his debts. When Percy’s wife drowned herself because of their affair, Mary felt responsible for her unhappiness.

Out of her pain and anguish at losing her infant daughter, and her feelings of abandonment by her parents, she wrote Frankenstein. The novel began on a dark and stormy night, during which a group of authors sat around a table discussing ghost stories and all agreed to write one. But only Mary’s novel became a famous literary classic and an untouched masterpiece.

The story revolves around an ambitious doctor, Victor Frankenstein, who abandons his home and family to study abroad and there undertakes a dangerous experiment. Salvaging body parts from local mortuaries and medical building dumping grounds, Victor constructs his own “creation” out of severed limbs and discerns a means of instilling life in it through an electrical storm. Once the Creature awakens, Victor is overwrought with the horror of what he has done and casts it aside.

Betrayed and abandoned by his creator, the Creature embarks on a journey of revenge that reveals the hideousness of his empty soul. Victor attempts to flee from and then to capture the Creature as devastation and death follows in its wake. In the end, on his deathbed, it is the Creature who comes to him, a sin that has followed him across time.

Parallels Between Shelley’s Life and Her Creation

There are many ways to interpret this piece of literature. You can look at it through a moral lens (it’s dangerous to play God), a metaphorical one (our creations will always resurrect from the dead to haunt us), a spiritual one (God exists, but does not interfere; He abandoned us here to do what we will), or as symbolic of Mary’s life (she felt neglected, abandoned, and like she did not belong here).

It’s easy to see the parallels between Mary and her father’s neglect. Perhaps her parents are Dr. Frankenstein. Intellectual giants, authors, skeptics, idealists, and creators in their own right, who bring her into the world at a great personal cost (the loss of her mother). But upon seeing her, her father “turns his back on her,” preoccupied with his intellectual pursuits, his debts, and his affairs. When he marries a second time, his new wife hates Mary, and her father does nothing about it. So not only has her mother abandoned her without hope, her father leaves her without guidance.

Both of them, in their progressive views, created the world she inhabits, one of atheism that shuns conventional morality. When she embraces it by doing what they preached and following her heart regardless of social morals, her father turns his back on her and punishes her for “becoming what you made me.” In her mind, he was supposed to support her, and approve of her in how she followed his ideals. Bafflingly, he doesn’t.

Reading a biography about her, I realized the novel is also the result of Mary grappling with big spiritual questions, in a world where her father taught her God does not exist. And it shows in her family and friends. Several of them lived in such despair they committed suicide, including her sister. If God does not exist, there is no meaning in our suffering and no hope of anything better in the next life. No hope of being reunited with her mother, her sister, her child, or her husband. This could echo the sense of futility the Creature and Victor feel in their situation. The Creature can never find acceptance, and Victor can never be rid of him.

Victor’s obsession creates something that haunts him and destroys his relationships, eradicating everything good in his life and closing in on him as he dies. The proverbial sin that never leaves his side and lingers in the shadows, prepared to reveal his crimes to the world, the Creature is both his ultimate humiliation and his greatest triumph.

Why Frankenstein Still Resonates Today

In a daring, controversial attempt to play God and “create,” Victor discovers he can counterfeit life but cannot reproduce goodness. The Creature is born without a soul, innocent of anything but the evil and hatred taught to him by an unforgiving world. He might have learned compassion and kindness had he not been abandoned by a creator who could not bear the sight of him, but he is left to solitude. Forever doomed to be shunned and feared wherever he goes.

In Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm says, “You were so preoccupied with the fact that you could, you never questioned whether you should.” That story is a modern take on Frankenstein, about a group of scientists who recreate dinosaurs, which then eat them and other innocent people. This is a lesson Victor never learned. He doesn’t realize until it’s too late that just because some things are possible does not mean he should do them.

Somehow, the audience never despises the Creature because it is a tragic victim of circumstance. It did not ask to be stitched together or brought to life. It never wanted to be alone and did not intend to harm anyone… at first. But without guidance, it founders in darkness.

I wish I could say we are smarter now, but we’re not.

Mary’s novel has never been done well on screen, but I am hoping the new version out in a couple of weeks will change that!