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with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at
a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit.” (Shel-
ley 1996, p. 30)
But the being he creates is not merely a mechanism, the sum of its in-
animate parts; it is indeed a being like himself, with free will not subject
to Frankenstein's control. As such, it enacts Frankenstein's own uncon-
scious desires, both good and evil, which have been sublimated by the
discipline of his research program and by cultural censorship. The Mon-
ster responds to the beauties of nature, to the joys of domesticity and the
ideas of great topics, occupations that Frankenstein had put aside for his
research. But it also kills Frankenstein's younger brother William, his fi-
ancée Elizabeth, and his friend Henry Clerval, the very people whom
Frankenstein is duty-bound to love but whom he has subconsciously
wished to be rid of because they attempt to distract him from his obses-
sion. The Monster is thus both an
alter ego
and a substitute for the natu-
ral child he has denied existence by deferring his marriage with Eliza-
beth. This
Doppelgänger
relationship symbolizes the belief in the
essential duality of man, the complex of rational and emotional selves,
mutually alienated but finally inseparable (Bloom 1965, pp. 611-18; Le-
vine
et al
. 1979, p. 15; Miyoshi 1969, pp. 79-89). This image was to be
expanded in Stevenson's
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(1886). In the image of the larger-than-human Monster, Shelley reaffirms
the Romantic position that the unconscious is an intrinsic and more pow-
erful part of the human experience than the rational mind and, if sup-
pressed, will ultimately emerge to destroy the latter.
It is not surprising that playwrights and film makers have returned
with such frequency to the story, modifying it to suit the prevailing
tastes, values, and scientific debates of their time, but it is interesting that
no screen version has retained Shelley's pessimistic ending.
The first physical presentation of Frankenstein was H.M. Milner's
play of 1826,
Frankenstein; or, the Man and the Monster
and the story
became the subject of one of the earliest films, the Edison Company's
Frankenstein
(1910). This film concentrated on the psychological aspects
of the story, emphasizing the fact that the creation of the Monster was
possible only because Frankenstein allowed his normal healthy mind to
be overcome by evil and unnatural thoughts. Edison's ending was far
