"I am the monster's mother" – Aesthetic strategies of monstrous creation in
contemporary Gothic narrative
Anya Heise-von der Lippe (Freie Universität Berlin)
1. Making monstrous
In our common cultural subconscious we are constantly aware that "the monster
always escapes" and " its monstrous progeny will return, ready to stalk again in another
bigger-than-ever sequel". 1 As bid by Mary Shelley in her Introduction to the 1831 edition of
Frankenstein her "hideous progeny" has "go[ne] forth and prosper[ed]".2 Over the nigh on
two centuries since its original creation the monster has appeared and re-appeared in
various adaptations from narrative text to theatre, film and hypertext. The initially nameless
monster, which is now frequently identified by its creator's name, has, however, gone far
beyond mere re-appearances in sequels and adaptations to become a cultural myth in its
own right.
Although few adaptations of Frankenstein seem be overmuch concerned with staying
faithful to the original text when it comes to reproducing the plot or the monster's features,
most adaptations tend to recreate at least some of the structural complexities of the novel.
Some elements already prevalent in the original text – most prominently the use of multiple
narrative frames and the parallels between monstrous body and monstrous narrative – have
made it into adaptations of Frankenstein in different media like theatre, film or hypertext.
Moreover, these elements also tend to appear in those adaptations more loosely based on
the novel, which focus on the myth of creation of Mary Shelley's text rather than the creation
of the monster.
Based on Linda Hutcheon's concept of adaptation as "its own palimpsestic thing",3 it is
necessary to distinguish, in the context of Frankenstein, between adaptations of the novel
which include at least some repetition of the original characters and plot (e.g. both James
Whale's 1931 movie Frankenstein and Kenneth Brannagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein) and brief intertextual or intermedial references to the novel or the cultural myth
of Frankenstein's monster in various other contexts. For the purpose of my argument I would
like to include a number of texts and films in the category of adaptation which are not, strictly
speaking, medialized reworkings of the original text, but offer some kind of transformation of
the story of monstrous creation from Mary Shelley's original novel and/or present fictionalized
versions of the creation of the novel itself. Examples of these are Shelley Jackson's
hypertext novel Patchwork Girl (1995) and James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935), as
well as, to some degree, Liz Lochhead's play Blood and Ice (1985) and Ken Russel's film
Gothic (1986), which are adaptations of the narrative of creation of the novel as described in
the 1818 Preface and the 1831 Introduction to Frankenstein. Thematic as well as structural
2
parallels can also be traced in Alien Resurrection (1997), although the film is not strictly
speaking an adaptation of the novel.
The autobiographical narrative surrounding the conception of Frankenstein has
become an integral part of the Frankenstein myth, but it is also a myth of creation in its own
right. Only hinted at in the 1818 Preface to Frankenstein, the story of the cold summer of the
year 1816 and the story-telling-contest in Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva which inspired
the then nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to write Frankenstein are described
in more detail in Mary Shelley's 1831 Introduction to the third edition. Some psychological
readings 4 of Frankenstein quote the 1831 Introduction as evidence that the novel can indeed
be interpreted as an expression of Mary Shelley's psyche and compare her description of a
waking nightmare with the novel's imagery of monstrous creation. If one considers the dream
episode which follows the creation of the monster in chapter 5 (or vol. 1, chap. 4 in the 1818
edition): Victor Frankenstein's nightmare of the merging of love and death in the faces of his
bride Elizabeth and his dead mother seems to establish a clear link between livid nightmares
and monstrous creation as well as between the Introduction and the actual text.
While most critics agree that the structure of Frankenstein resembles a complicated
Chinese box system5 or a "Matryoshka chain", 6 in which each tale is embedded within a
frame narrative, embedded within another frame narrative and so on, the 1818 Preface and
1831 Introduction are not usually considered as part of this system but as autobiographical
paratexts. However, the questions of (literary) creation and authority considered in the
Preface and especially in the Introduction reiterate the novel's concern with questions of
authority and creation on various levels. The waning degree in discursive authority between
the different embedded narratives from Walton's authoritative letters, via Frankenstein's
feverish tale right down to the surprisingly eloquent monster's narrative is only one example
of this. Moreover, the novel's structure seems to invite the inclusion of yet another frame
narrative – even if this means a certain degree of blurring of boundaries between assumed
fact and assured fiction.
The multiple frame narratives in Frankenstein underline the careful construction of the
text – both on the level of textual creation and on the level of monstrous creation. In Shelley
Jackson's version of the creation of the monster in Patchwork Girl (1996) these parallel
processes are visualized by different hypertext links, which give the reader the possibility to
follow different narrative strands 7. However, the same parallel mechanisms of textual and
monstrous creation are already at work in Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein's description of
the monstrous body shows its contradictory aspects – the fragmentary structure of his body
and the shortcomings in his construction: "His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected
his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of
muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowing; his teeth of a
3
pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery
eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were
set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips."8 Just like the different narrative frames
which make up the novel, the monster has been carefully constructed from different body
parts, which Frankenstein collected on his visits to the charnel house and the dissecting
room. However, both the body of the creature and the textual body are monstrous in their
make-up: If, as Jurij Lottman argues in Structure of the Artistic Text,9 the beginning and the
ending of a literary text make up its frame, then Frankenstein is a seriously distorted textual
body. Not only does it begin at the end (at the end of both Frankenstein and his creature in
the arctic sea), but also is the actual beginning, the creation story, not told until the middle of
the novel.
The monster, whose narrative lies at the heart of the text, draws attention to the
processes of "making monstrous".10 His questions not only hark back to the quotation from
Milton's Paradise Lost that serves as the novel's motto,11 they also draw attention to the two
processes of creation at work in the text: Both Walton and Frankenstein keep a written
record of their scientific pursuits, suggesting that making monstrous is a discursive as well as
a productive practice. However, while Walton addresses his letters to his (absent) sister,
Frankenstein's unintentional addressee is the monster himself, who discovers the journal of
his creation in the pocket of Frankenstein's coat. The discovery and reading of the journal
puts the monster in the position of the reader in the text, trying to make sense of Victor
Frankenstein's earlier narrative of creation. At the same time the reading process serves as a
link to the narratives of textual creation in the 1818 Preface and the 1831 Introduction.
The 1818 Preface is commonly assumed to be written by Percy Shelley. While this
adds an additional layer of fictionality to the text of the Preface, the 1831 Introduction, which
precedes a heavily revised version of the novel, narrates a retrospective and, thus, equally
fictionalized version of events. However, the most interesting feature of the Introduction is its
focus on creative authority. Mary Shelley's narrative voice establishes authorship without
claiming authority by describing the actual process of 'thinking of a story'. "Have you thought
of a story?"12 her companions ask her repeatedly, and she describes in detail how: "When I
placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination,
unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind
with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute
mental vision, …". 13 While she describes her waking nightmare vision as having been
inspired by a talk between Lord Byron and Percy Shelley on the topic of Galvanism and the
reanimation of corpses, the introduction also claims that "I certainly did not owe the
suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but
for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the
4
world."14 The Introduction, thus, establishes Mary Shelley's authorship of the story while at
the same time ascribing authority over 'the form in which it was presented' to Percy Shelley.
In Blood and Ice Liz Lochhead creates another version of this claim of an author
without narrative authority by making her character, Mary Shelley, claim that the monster
presented itself to her to be written: "my last monstrosity, my grotesque invention, to my
surprise my enduring and popular success. I didn't invent you, I didn't write you. You came
unbidden and I wrote you down."15 The creature's voice continues to haunt Mary Shelley in
Lochhead's play. The memories it evokes provide the connection between the frame
narrative, which is set years after the publication of Frankenstein, and the play's central plot,
which re-enacts the creation of the novel.
Frankenstein echoes the careful construction of female authority established in the
Introduction later in the text in the form of the monster's mate who is destroyed before it is
even complete. Victor Frankenstein's reasoning for his act of destruction takes into account
the ethical and aesthetical problems he faces with his second creation: "she might become
ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder
and wretchedness. … she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning
animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation."16 Alan Rauch
points out, that Frankenstein's reactions to his male and female creature differ in one
important point – namely the question of how they embody scientific knowledge. While the
male monster has frequently been read as an attempt at creating life without the female
body, this does not hold for the female monster: "Frankenstein, as repulsed as he is by the
creature he has created, is completely unable to contemplate the notion of a female
embodiment of knowledge."17 While I agree with this reading up to a point, there is also a
strong case to be made for the way in which Frankenstein's argument highlights female
authority and power as a force to be reckoned with. The female monster is destroyed
precisely because she would be 'a thinking and reasoning animal' and, thus, able to make
her own decisions.
The constant shifting of narrative perspectives between the different frame narratives
reflects the moral ambiguity of the original tale, allowing readers to identify with either
monster or scientist, or possibly both characters at different times. This process is facilitated
by the articulateness of the creature, who is able to argue his own case and ask
metaphysical questions about his existence, thus confronting the reader with the
fragmentariness of his or her own existence and corporeality as well as more metaphysical
questions about existence in general.
As a creature stitched together from various body parts and then abandoned by his
creator, Frankenstein's monster suffers from the postmodern condition, so to say, avant la
lettre. The creature is an outcast from society, suffering from intellectual homelessness and
5
keenly aware of his aesthetic deficiencies. It is thus small wonder that the hybrid and
fragmentary structure of the monster's physical and textual body have become constants of
the Gothic genre in general and the various adaptations of the novel in particular.
Postmodern issues like multi-perspectivity, narrative as well as corporeal fragmentation and
the use of modern technology to create monsters are already at hand in the original text and
are only enhanced and underlined by the further possibilities of new media. In the following I
will discuss how two different medial adaptations of Frankenstein, James Whale's Bride of
Frankenstein, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien
Resurrection, a film loosely based on the Frankenstein myth, address these issues.
2. We belong dead
Quite unexpectedly, the incorrectly named bride of Frankenstein in James Whale's
1935 movie version can be read as an image of female authority. In contrast with the clumsy
and horribly scarred male monster, made famous by Boris Karloff, the bride, brilliantly
portrayed by Elsa Lanchester, is both beautiful and graceful – a famously wild hairdo and a
set of perfectly symmetrical, well-hidden scars on her jaw-line the only reminder of the
monstrosity of the creation process. Although she does not speak, her rejection of the male
monster is quite obvious from her shrieks and hisses – thus echoing the original Victor
Frankenstein's thoughts on female authority. Of course, this obstinate female monster cannot
be allowed to live: the male monster promises to destroy himself as well as her in the
explosion of the laboratory, famously claiming that "We belong dead."18
James Whale's earlier movie Frankenstein has frequently been read as the ultimate
monster movie and the "most truly representative work"19 of horror cinema. This, as Michael
Grant argues, is due to the films structural similarity to what it narrates: "The film concerns
itself with the process of creation and the consequences of it, a process that involves not
only Frankenstein's creation of the monster but also the articulation whereby the film itself
comes into being."20 The same mechanism is also at work in Bride of Frankenstein, as the
film raises question of creation and authority which connect it to Mary Shelley's original text.
As Ann Marie Adams points out, the final scene of the movie, the only scene that features
the bride of the title, is part of a framing device based on the double role of Elsa Lanchester
as both the female monster and the fictionalized author Mary Shelley. And it is precisely this
frame which reiterates the novel's original narrative structure as well as its message of
female authority.
Following Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's argument, Adams points out, that the
female monster in the movie is indeed the dark double of the author portrayed in the frame
narrative and that this doubling "helps to answer the question that Byron raised in the
introductory sequence. [Mary] Shelley’s 'bland and lovely brow’ could imagine such horrors
6
because she is part of such horror herself – hence the doubling of the hyperarticulate author
and the hissing Creature."21 According to Gilbert and Gubar's second-wave-feminist
assessment of early 19th-century female novelists like Austen, the Brontës and Mary Shelley,
the female authors' dark doubles in the texts can be read as an attempt to "come to terms
with their own uniquely female feelings of fragmentation."22 While it is certainly too simplistic
an interpretation to read the female monster as the only psychological double or even the
embodiment of the author in the text, the structure of the frame narrative in Bride of
Frankenstein, which is based on the identity of female author and female monster, seems to
encourage such a reading. However, the male monster in the original text and his attempts to
come to terms with his own body and the narrative of his creation present an equally strong
image of fragmentation and, thus, an identification figure for the (postmodern/female) reader.
3. Who am I?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien Resurrection (1997) has also been read as a myth of
creation and female empowerment. Although not strictly speaking an adaptation of Mary
Shelley's novel, Alien Resurrection reflects the plot premise of Frankenstein (i.e. the scientific
hubris which produces monsters) and recreates the complicated Chinese-box structure of the
novel as part of its corporeal narrative. In two intertwined plotlines (one of creation and one
of destruction) scientists first create a Matryoshka chain of monsters. Then, in accordance
with the traditions of the horror movie genre, the monsters have to be destroyed in order for
the humans to survive.
The first act of creation in the movie is the cloning of Ellen Ripley (or clone number 8 in
a row of unsuccessful experiments, which Ripley 8 discovers and destroys later). The alien
queen is then bred as a parasite inside Ripley's chest, to be taken out by the scientists who
want to breed more aliens to use them for medical research. Of course, the alien queen is
already breeding as well: The narrative of creation deviates into two parallel lines here, as
the queen first lays eggs allowing the aliens to multiply and take over the ship, then gives
birth to a human-alien hybrid – a creature more monstrous than the original aliens because
of its brutality and the fact that it is a combination of human baby and alien. The newborn
alien rejects and kills his alien birth-mother for Ripley, who will ultimately kill it in return,
because it is a threat to humanity. However, her regrets about having to kill her offspring also
reflect her involvement with the alien species, and serve as a reminder of her earlier claim: "I
am the monster's mother."23
Unlike the previous Alien movies, Alien Resurrection does not provide a clear
distinction between good humans and bad aliens – not even for its heroine Ripley. Drawing
on Barbara Creed's psychological reading of the original Alien movie as a re-enactment of
the Freudian "primal scene"24 of birth and it's horrors, Catherine Constable argues that
7
"[b]ecorning the monster's mother involves a breakdown of traditional models of identity"25.
Her reading of the Alien series juxtaposes a Kristevan model of constructing identity through
the abjection of the other in the first three Alien films with the concept of the body as a
permeable structure in Alien Resurrection, for which she draws on Luce Irrigaray's concept of
the body as flow.
Ripley and the alien queen share interconnected identities because the queen has
been bred inside Ripley's body. Moreover, they have also exchanged some of their species'
physical characteristics. This blurring of boundaries between the inside and the outside as
well as between the human and its monstrous other is part of the discourse of monstrosity,
which surrounds Ripley and the alien queen. While Ripley has inherited some of the alien
queen's strength and a propensity to act instinctively like an animal rather than a human
being, her 'gift' to the queen is a womb and the ability to give birth instead of laying eggs.
The birth scene at the centre of the movie ends what I would call the plot of creation.
The emergence of the baby alien from the bursting womb of the queen is the final point in a
row of birth / creation scenes and moves the film further along in the plot of destruction, i.e.
the killing of the aliens and the destruction of the alien-infested ship. The newborn hybrid kills
first his mother, the queen, claiming Ripley as his 'real' mother, and then the scientist who
created the Ripley clones. This effectively ends both the line of monstrous births and the line
of monstrous creation, with the symbolic death of the rational voice of the scientist.
The juxtaposition of the primal scene of the alien queen giving birth with the
rationalizing comments of the scientist links the film back to the ambiguity of Frankenstein's
plot of scientific creation. Acting under the guise of medical research like Victor Frankenstein,
the scientists in Alien Resurrection have created a monster. Like Victor Frankenstein they
have also utterly failed in their attempts to control the creature they created and must pay for
their hubris with their lives. Although less complex in terms of narrative structure, Alien
Resurrection, like Frankenstein, uses the narrative of monstrous creation as a structuring
device. The movie also draws on the fragmented identity of the monster and the central
question of (postmodern) identity crisis: "Who am I?"26 The distorted and fragmented Ripley
clones, which Ripley 8 destroys, seem to suggest that there are many answers to this
question.
4. Patchwork
Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl is a postmodern monster in its own right – ironically
aware and frequently commenting on her own corporeal deficiencies. Claiming at least some
authority over the narrative, she creates and re-creates her own monstrous body in various
ways, while commenting on the corporeal and textual multiplicity of the writing process: "I
was not one body and there is more than one way to write this."27 The multiple possibilities of
8
the creation process are re-enacted as multiple choices for the reader, who can follow the
Mary Shelley in the text in her creative process(es).
Each of the monster's body parts has its own narrative voice and history. The individual
body parts are stitched together to form a loosely connected swarm, an unstable, constantly
changing monstrous body which frequently threatens to fall apart and has, at some point, to
be held together with duct tape. The loosely connected hypertextual maze of links and
narrative threads is, thus, a monstrous body in itself, visually represented by clickable maps
of the patchwork girl's body/parts. Charged with narrative authority, the reader has to decide
which links to follow and how to (re-)assemble the tale and the monstrous body. Connected
by multiple links, the frames of interconnected lexia (the text-windows of the Storyspace
program) have taken over and multiplied the original framing devices of Mary Shelley's text.
The creation of hypertext bears a striking similarity to the cutting up and reassembly
involved in the creation of monstrous bodies. As Shelley Jackson argues in 'Stitch Bitch –
The Patchwork Girl': "The body is a patchwork, though the stitches might not show. … The
body is not even experienced as a whole. … I don't want to lose the self, only to strip it of its
claim to naturalness, its compulsion to protect its boundaries, its obsession with
wholeness…"28
This claim does not only hold for hypertextual / monstrous bodies but also for the body
of the reader who, as N. Katherine Hayles has claimed must transform him- or herself into a
cyborg reader to connect with the text: "Electronic Hypertexts Initiate and Demand
Cyborg Reading Practices. […] Although this subject position may also be evoked through
the content of print texts, electronic hypertexts necessarily enact it through the specificity of
the medium."29 With regard to the last part of Hayles' argument, I would like to point out that
this 'cyborg subject position', made necessary by multiple perspectives and various
fragmented narratives, is not an entirely new phenomenon. In our globalized and
hyperconnected culture knowledge – and especially knowledge about the body – has long
since started to become organized in rhizomatic structures. As Mary Shelley's original text
shows, human awe at the infinite possibilities of scientific knowledge and developments is
not exactly a new and unprecedented phenomenon. In fact, one could argue that the
necessity for a cyborg subject position is already outlined within the complicated structure of
Mary Shelley's original text. Although the format of the printed book suggests a linear
approach, it is still possible and maybe even necessary to read the complex narrative
structure of Frankenstein from the inside out, starting with the innermost framed narrative
and the creation of the monster. This reading would follow the chronology of the writing
process suggested by Mary Shelley in the 1831 Introduction: "I began that day with the
words, It was on a dreary night of November", 30 writing the novel from the inside out with the
monster at its center.
9
Notes
1
2
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: Monster Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. p. 6f.
Mary Shelley: Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition, 1831. In: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. New York:
Norton, 1996. p. 173.
3
According to Linda Hutcheon an adaptation consists of "an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other
work or works; a creative and an interpretive act of appropriation / salvaging;" and "an extended intertextual
engagement with the adapted work." (Linda Hutcheon: A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006, p.
8f.).
4
Cf. Barbara Johnson 'My Monster/Myself'. In: Timothy Morton (ed.): Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - A
Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2002. p. 110f.
5
Cf. Fred Botting: Making Monstrous. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991, p. 41f.
6
7
Lokke Heiss: ' Frankenstein and the Matryoshka Chain'. South Carolina Review, 41:1, 2008.
From the lexia (textual frame) "sight" the reader can choose between the links "written" or "sewn" which lead to
two different descriptions of the creative process: In "written" the fictionalized Mary Shelley describes how she
wrote the monster's story; in "sewn" she describes how she sew it together from various body parts.
8
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. New York: Norton, 1996. p. 34.
9
Jurij Lotman: Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: 1977, 210
10
11
Cf. Fred Botting: Making Monstrous. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.
The novel's motto is taken from Book 10 of Paradise Lost, Lines 743-745: "Did I request thee, Maker, from my
clay/To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee/From darkness to promote me?"
12 Mary Shelley: Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition, 1831. In: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. New York:
Norton, 1996. p. 171. The italics underline the repetition of the concept of 'thinking of a story' in the original text.
13
Ibid. p. 172.
14
15
16
17
18
19
Ibid. p. 172.
Liz Lochhead: Blood and Ice. London: Nick Hern, 2009. p. 40.
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. New York: Norton, 1996. p. 114f.
Alan Rauch: 'The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Frankenstein'. Studies in Romanticism, 34:2, 1995. p. 234.
Bride of Frankenstein. Dir. James Whale, Universal Pictures, 1935.
Michael Grant: 'James Whale's Frankenstein, the Horror Film and the Symbolic Biology of the Cinematic
Monster'. In: Stephen Bann (ed.): Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion, 1994, p. 116 f.
20
Ibid. p. 116 f.
21
Ann Marie Adams: 'What's in a Frame: The Authorizing Presence in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein.
Journal of Popular Culture, 42:3, 2009. p. 409f.
22
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. p. 78.
23
24
25
Alien Resurrection. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.
Barbara Creed: The Monstrous Feminine. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 17.
Catherine Constable: 'Becoming the Monster's Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien Series'. In: Annette
Kuhn (ed.): Alien Zone II. London: Verso, 1999. p. 174.
26
Alien Resurrection. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.
27
Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl. Eastgate Systems, 1995, 'a life'.
Shelley Jackson: 'Stitch Bitch'. In: David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.): Rethinking Media Change.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. 239f.
29
N. Katherine Hayles: 'Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of MediaSpecific Analysis'. In: Postmodern Culture, 10:2, 2000. p. 13. Bold print in the original.
30
Mary Shelley: Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition, 1831. In: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. New York:
Norton, 1996. p. 172.
28
10
Works Cited
Alien Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Twentieth Century Fox, 1997)
Ann Marie Adams: 'What’s in a Frame?: The Authorizing Presence in James Whale’s Bride of
Frankenstein'. In: The Journal of Popular Culture, 42:3, 2009.
Fred Botting: Making Monstrous. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.
Bride of Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, Universal Pictures, 1935).
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: Monster Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Catherine Constable: 'Becoming the Monster's Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien Series'.
In: Annette Kuhn (ed.): Alien Zone II. London: Verso, 1999.
Barbara Creed: The Monstrous Feminine. London: Routledge, 1993.
Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar: The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000.
Gothic (dir. Ken Russell, Virgin, 1986).
Michael Grant: 'James Whale's Frankenstein, the Horror Film and the Symbolic Biology of the
Cinematic Monster'. In: Stephen Bann (ed.): Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. London:
Reaktion, 1994,
N. Katherine Hayles: 'Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of
Media-Specific Analysis'. In: Postmodern Culture, 10:2, 2000.
Lokke Heiss: ' Frankenstein and the Matryoshka Chain'. South Carolina Review, 41:1, 2008.
Linda Hutcheon: A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl. Eastgate Systems, 1995.
Shelley Jackson: 'Stitch Bitch'. In: David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.): Rethinking Media
Change. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.
Christopher Keep: 'Growing Intimate with Monsters – Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl and the Gothic
Nature of Hypertext'. In: Romanticism on the Net, 41-42, 2006.
Liz Lochhead: Blood and Ice. London: Nick Hern, 2009.
Jurij Lotman: Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: 1977, 210
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (dir. Kenneth Brannagh, Tri Star Pictures, 1994)
Timothy Morton (ed.): Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2002.
Alan Rauch: 'The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Frankenstein'. Studies in Romanticism, 34:2,
1995.
Carolina Sanchez-Palencia Carazo, Manuel Almagro Jiménez: 'Gathering the Limbs of the Text in
Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. In: Atlantis. 28:1, 2006.
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1996.