Hold onto your electrodes, because this may come as a surprise: “Frankenstein,” one of the most impactful and revered novels ever written, a crowning achievement in female authorship, has barely ever been adapted by another woman. The wacky 1994 film where Robert De Niro grunts his way through playing the Monster? Directed by Kenneth Branagh. The 1990 camp classic “Frankenhooker”? A guy. That obscure one you rented from a video store or found buried deep in a streaming library while really stoned? That was a man, too.
Granted, there are (literally) one or two outliers, like Zelda Williams’ perfectly fine 2023 film “Lisa Frankenstein.” But even that movie dilutes Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel to a fraction of its story, reducing all of the text’s thematic resonance to a footnote along with it. And that nuance is critically important. Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is a story of creation, birth, love, fear, exile and loneliness. A woman’s perspective is inextricable from its text. There’s a good reason why “Frankenstein” is favored in gothic literature curricula over Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”: Shelley’s novel has infinitely more to parse. “Frankenstein” is rich with subtext yet highly accessible. It’s not dense, it doesn’t blabber on and it certainly doesn’t reek of masculine self-obsession. Yet, the bulk of people — down to a fraction of a percent — who have been given the power and financial means to adapt “Frankenstein” have been men.
