Frankenstein is a cautionary tale exploring the intersection of scientific development, morality, and culpability. It addresses timeless themes of scientific research detached from ethics and the foundation of human responsibility; is the creature created monstrous or made that way through rejection.

Academic Articles

  • John Bugg analyzes Frankenstein’s themes of language, education, otherness, and empire. The article centers on the dual educational accounts: the Creature’s independent education and Victor Frankenstein’s involuntary exile and alienation. Bugg exposes that the Creature’s method of attaining language and literacy parallels ex-slaves which symbolizes the understanding of racial and social otherness acquired during education, resulting in rebellion and exile. Bugg also demonstrates how Victor Frankenstein experiences an inverted education of exile and humiliation, forced into a position parallel to slavery and expulsion. Bugg connects these narratives to 19th-century discussions on race, empire, slavery, and exile, emphasizing language as an instrument of power and exclusion.


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    Bugg, John. “‘Master of Their Language’: Education and Exile in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 4, 2005, pp. 655–66. JSTOR, https://doi-org.ezproxy.waterfield.murraystate.edu/10.1525/hlq.2005.68.4.655. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.

  • Emma Liggins argues the female corpse engages with the Victorian anatomy debate, exposing how female sexuality and bodies were objectified by male doctors. The female corpse in Frankenstein is characterized by facets of horror, repulsion, and hesitant desire, showing concerns about medical authority over and violation of women. Victor Frankenstein exemplifies the nineteenth-century male scientist who substitutes sexual relationships and who endorses violence on the female body—a representation for the multifaceted cultural, sexual, and professional undercurrents connotations of the era.

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    LIGGINS, EMMA. “The Medical Gaze and the Female Corpse: Looking at Bodies in Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 32, no. 2, 2000, pp. 129–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.waterfield.murraystate.edu/stable/29533387. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.

  • Cynthia Pon analyzes the masculine narratives of adventure, conquest, and scientific achievement as faulty, self-destructive, and ostracizing to female and marginalized identities. Frankenstein critiques long-established masculine standards of invention, progress, and humanity. In contrast, Mary Shelley’s authorial role and the aborted female creature embodies an established, reciprocal, and responsible method of creation and humanity. She examines Mary Shelley’s authorial status and lifelong preservation and formation of Percy Shelley’s literary reputation as female artistic endeavor distinctive from the masculine principle of innovation.

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    Pon, Cynthia. “‘Passages’ in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’: Toward a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2000, pp. 33–50. JSTOR, https://doi-org.ezproxy.waterfield.murraystate.edu/10.2307/3195378. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.

  • Bianca Salomon examines Frankenstein, concentrating on Calvinism and Arminianism and the controversy between free will and predestination. Frankenstein utilizes overt biblical references and inserts in the religious conversation about divine justice, mercy, and human agency. The Calvinist principle of predestination is imitated in the fates of Victor Frankenstein and his creature. Both characters experience inevitable ruin: the creature is fated to despair despite his aspiration to be virtuous, the Calvinist concept that free will is an illusion, while Victor is confident of his redemption but eventually falls, representing the predestined damnation view. The novel ends with suggests of hope, this perspective is a critique of Calvinist resignation and acknowledges the Arminian principle in a God receptive to human attempts to overcome sin.

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    Salomon, Bianca. “‘Fixed as Fate’: Religion and Free Will in the World of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” LOGOS: A Journal of Undergraduate Research, vol. 18, Sept. 2025, pp. 115–23. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=d2100b76-2030-332a-bcb0-2c6a6a51d19c.

  • Robert G. Beghetto investigates the correlation between Frankenstein and the rise of modern secular thought in the early 19th century. It examines how the novel reflects a transitional period where traditional beliefs are challenged by scientific logic, leading to a contradictory state of disenchantment and a longing for re-enchantment. The character of Victor Frankenstein embodies the conflict between scientific ambition and the moral consequences of creating life, demonstrating the struggle of modern individuals caught between the fragments of a traditional past and the worries of a disillusioned world. The narrative highlights the astonishing nature of the Creature, which symbolizes the alienation and pragmatic impasses faced by individuals in a rapidly changing society, ultimately probing the boundaries between the natural and the man-made.

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    Beghetto, Robert G. “Frankenstein and the ‘Birth’ of Secularized Modernity.” Monstrous Liminality: Or, The Uncanny Strangers of Secularized Modernity, Ubiquity Press, 2022, pp. 21–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.waterfield.murraystate.edu/stable/j.ctv2b6z8fb.5. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

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