Critical Introduction

Ever since the release of James Whale's Frankenstein (Universal Pictures, 1931), starring Boris Karloff, readers have come to Mary Shelley's novel with a very particular set of expectations about the appearance and behaviour of the Monster. 100 years earlier, when this revised edition was first published, the engraved frontispiece by Theodor Richard Edward von Holst (1810–1844) would have been the primary way that readers gained these expectations. Von Holst's image is quite surprising for those of us raised with images of Karloff lumbering around, bolts in his neck, stitches and staples holding his heavy-browed, flat-topped head together. The scene is set in a Gothic interior, with an arched window filled with tracery and glass roundels, a bookshelf topped with a series of human skulls, a mystical diagram hanging on the wall, and various scientific apparatuses on a table. However, the main focus of the image is clearly the Monster himself. He is the brightest object in the room—and the largest. The figure is nude, with the sheet that presumably covered him cast off onto the skeleton beneath his legs. He is clearly massive, but well-proportioned and muscular, following classical models for male beauty. Von Holst visually connects the Monster to the skeleton beneath him by placing their legs and feet in parallel position, and by emphasizing the bone structure beneath the skin and flesh of the Monster's foot and hand, indicating to the viewer that the newly alive Monster was assembled from fragments of death. There are bright rays of light slanting from Victor Frankenstein to the Monster, but the light source is unclear. These lines, therefore, seem more designed to connect these two figures, to imply a transfer of the divine spark of life from this deeply flawed “god” to his creation, who reclines on the ground in a languid post that loosely recalls that of Michelangelo's painting of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Here, though, instead of reaching out to his creation, this creator flees in horror.

Viewing Questions

What is the meaning of the Creature's wide-eyed expression? And what is the basis, in this image, of Frankenstein's fear and flight?