The Monster and the Parent: Rethinking Frankenstein

The Creature stands in a desolate landscape in stormy weather

Why Frankenstein still matters — even when we don’t fully love it — and what it teaches us about parental expectations, human responsibility, and the enduring power of literature.

Whenever the topic of classics is brought up, there seems to be a consensus that everyone needs to like them, or at least appreciate each and every one of them. I did enjoy many of the classics I’ve read, fully, but some — like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — leave me conflicted. I’ve read it a couple of times and watched several adaptations, including the latest one, and my feeling hasn’t really changed: it never manages to blow me away.

I often wondered why, especially since Mary Shelley made such a tremendous contribution to women’s literature. No one expected a young woman to write a story like this. Recently, I realized that part of the reason might be the genre itself. But more than that… I just couldn’t stand Victor — neither as a spoiled child nor as a self-pitying adult. Yet the novel still manages to open a host of questions; lately, it’s made me reflect a lot on parenthood and the cruelty many parents, particularly fathers, inflict on their children.

My first encounter with Frankenstein was watching the Boris Karloff film. I must have been eight or nine, and I was absolutely terrified of the monster — its eyes, its movements, everything about it haunted me. Like many others, I was convinced — as I thought was the right thing to believe — that the Creature was the monster: ugly, disfigured, unusual in every sense. Since then, I’ve read the novel several times at different ages and stages of life, and I recently watched Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation. After all that, I find myself still terrified, but now for very different reasons. Reading and watching it as an adult made me see where the true monstrosity really lies.

The plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is probably widely known. But just in case a reader hasn’t encountered it yet, here’s the gist. Victor Frankenstein, an aspiring scientist, has two dreams: to conquer death and to become a father. In a certain way, he succeeds by creating a living creature out of parts of different cadavers. The creature sees him as his father and expects fatherly love — something Victor is incapable of giving. Worse, he is horrified and disgusted when his “son” doesn’t meet his expectations, and he completely rejects him.

A story like this forces you to think about fatherhood, doesn’t it? Too often, it’s presented as something wonderful and blissful — something people enjoy fully. But what happens when a child doesn’t live up to a parent’s expectations? What if they have a disability, intellectual or physical? What if they are autistic or have ADHD? What if they are lesbian or gay? Or simply follow their own path instead of the one imposed by their parents?

I find myself thinking about my own father. In his own way, he loved me — but the fact that he, a respected doctor from the highest caste, had a lesbian daughter with autism who loved literature and punk rock… that was not something he could fully accept. I also think about Theo’s father in The Goldfinch — a man who loves only himself and doesn’t care what happens to his son. Even worse, he doesn’t hesitate to come up with a plan to use and steal from his own child for his benefit. Much like Victor, he values his child only for what he can gain. For Victor, it was eternal glory and recognition as a scientist who had done something unprecedented: conquered death. For Theo Decker’s father, it was money.

After all this time, I believe Frankenstein shows that parenthood is never as simple or blissful as we’re told. It exposes the dangers of conditional love, the cruelty of expectations, and the cost of ignoring the humanity of those we bring into the world — lessons that remain unsettling, even when the child seems “perfect.” And that’s why classics endure: they confront us with truths that are uncomfortable, that challenge our assumptions, and reveal patterns of power, care, and failure across generations.

Mary Shelley’s achievement lies not just in her imaginative audacity — creating a story no one expected from a young woman in her time — but in insisting that literature can hold a mirror to society, to parents, and to ourselves. Even if I can’t fully love Frankenstein, I can’t deny its force or its relevance, and that is why it continues to matter, two centuries later.