Articles About Frankenstein: Top 5 Examples and 6 Prompts

Discover our guide to help you begin writing articles about Frankenstein, including prompts and examples to help you get started.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a literary phenomenon, still selling in vast numbers today, over two centuries since it was first published. A first edition of the novel recently sold for a staggering $1.17 million, breaking the record for the most money paid for a printed work written by a female author.

Frankenstein has had many modern incarnations as movies and TV series and remains a regular feature on school syllabus and exam papers. Advances in tech and the field of genetics mean that the novel’s themes continue to offer rich parallels with the real world, and articles about Frankenstein are likely to be popular with students and those who simply love the novel on its own merits. If you’re interested in this topic, you might also enjoy our guide to the best authors like Stephen King!

Articles About Frankenstein Examples

1. Frankenstein and the Feminine Subversion of the Novel by Devon Hodges

“Shelley’s text works to change structures of narrative as well as to introduce new topics of discussion.”

This article explores the extent to which Shelley’s novel undermines, rather than supports, a patriarchal narrative. The main discussion in this article looks at how Frankenstein challenges previous structural conventions and is keen to introduce new discussion topics. Hodges writes about how the rise of female authority was directly connected to the rise of the novel as an art form, with women – in the capacity of both readers and writers – drawn to the genre.

2. The Strange and Twisted Life of Frankenstein by Jill Lepore

“Frankenstein is four stories in one: an allegory, a fable, an epistolary novel, and an autobiography, a chaos of literary fertility that left its very young author at pains to explain her hideous progeny.” 

‘Naming the unnameable’ is, for the author of this article, the key to unlocking the many layers of Shelley’s novel. Lepore discusses the link between the unnamed monster in the book with Shelley’s first child, given birth when the author was sixteen and remained unnamed at its death at just eleven days old. The article goes on to discuss the possibility that the poet Lord Byron was an inspiration for the character of Viktor Frankenstein. 

The author also looks at how some of the central concepts of the book could be connected to deep societal concerns in the wake of the French revolution, and the closeness of the monster’s story with topics such as slavery.

3. What Frankenstein Means Now by Jack Stilgoe

“Scientists and museums recognize the public appeal of the Frankenstein story, but are nervous about the difficult questions it raises.”

The author of this article looks at the reasons for Frankenstein’s enduring popularity two centuries after its first publication, its relevance to new advances in genetic engineering, and the bioethical conundrums these technologies pose. Stilgoe debates how far the tale of Frankenstein is a birth parable and the extent to which it reflects the importance of a good mentor in responsible scientific practice.

4. Frankenstein: A Creation of Artificial Intelligence? by Jennings Byrd and Paige Paquette 

“A two-century-year-old tale provides a blueprint for understanding the conflict among humans and machines and provides a roadmap for harmonization in the past, present, and future.”

For Byrd and Paquette, Frankenstein can be used as a lens through which to better understand the potential conflicts between AI machines and humans. The article suggests that given the novel was written during the Industrial Revolution, it should be seen as the first literary posting of questions about the shifting roles of man and machine – and that the monster itself can be understood as the earliest form of AI to appear in a work of fiction.

5. Frankenstein’s Fixations: A Psychoanalytic Evolutionary Approach to Childhood, Sexuality, and Outsiders by Kaitlin Harris

“Frankenstein and the creature’s relationship explicates the undifferentiated differentiation with the creature’s place as the double of Frankenstein.”

This article focuses on psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology to analyze the extent to which the story of Frankenstein’s monster deconstructs ‘the ambiguity of relations with others and the self. This exploration leads to discussions of the idea of a cycle of abuse, incorporating neglect and trauma, a cornerstone of the novel, and how the origins of this cycle can be traced in the inventor’s unconscious rage at his father following the loss of his mother.

Prompts for Articles About Frankenstein

1. What Was the Background of Frankenstein?

Use this article to set the historical stage against which the novel was written, published, and first received. Consider the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the mores of a patriarchal society, and the author’s life and personal experience when setting out how these things influenced Frankenstein’s birth as a literary work.

2. Why Is Frankenstein Still So Popular?

There have been more than 170 incarnations of Frankenstein’s monster in movies and TV series (compared to 133 representations of Count Dracula and just 36 of Quasimodo), meaning it tops the list of most-prevalent literary gothic characters on the silver and smaller screen. 

Create an article to explore why the novel and its themes remain so popular in modern times and why so many directors and writers are keen to depict the tale. Cover points from the book’s relevance to new scientific breakthroughs and its status as a classic creepy page-turner. You might also be interested in our essays about technology for your next project.

3. How Far Did Frankenstein Break the Mold?

Frankenstein was published in the same year as Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This offers an excellent opportunity to explore the extent to which Shelley’s novel went against the grain in terms of its genre, plotline, narrative voice, and content. 

The book was first published anonymously – the fact that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote its foreword convinced many readers that he was the author. Discuss why Mary Shelley needed to hide her authorship of the work and its influence on subsequent writing by female authors.

You’ll need to present your evidence clearly and concisely in this article to persuade your reader; if you’d like to learn more, our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay in this guide.

4. Frankenstein: Literary Influences

Nothing is created from nothing – use this prompt to explore the literary influences that likely shaped Shelley’s vision. These could include her mother Mary Wollstonecraft’s book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Pygmalion, and Ovid – the latter of which provided the novel’s subtitle: The Modern Prometheus. Milton’s Paradise Lost and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are also influential. 

In your article, look at possible influences for Frankenstein pulling ideas from novels of the time period, famous authors, and world events at the time. Use this as an opportunity to show your thoughts and feelings about how a writer creates a bestseller.

5. Frankenstein: One of the First Gothic Novels

Although Frankenstein is often cited as one of the first gothic horror novels ever written, is this the case? The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, published over fifty years before Shelley’s novel, is widely argued to hold the title. In your article, consider the gothic genre itself, its key tropes, the extent to which Frankenstein sits inside this genre – and the extent to which it subverts it.

6. The Major Themes in Frankenstein

Familial responsibility, science and its bounds, judgment, and the dangers of technology are all rich grounds for discussion in this article. The important role of fire, as a symbol in the novel, can be analyzed too – it represents the power of knowledge (possibly forbidden knowledge) and connects directly to the Prometheus myth. For help editing your articles, we recommend using the best grammar checker. Our round-up profiles these tools and offers discounts.