I first enjoyed Frankenstein through Guillermo del Toro’s film adaptation on Netflix, and I remember feeling genuinely impressed by the set design, the actors, everything pulled me in. The movie left such an impact that I immediately checked my local library and borrowed the original book. I was so curious about where it all began.

But the moment I opened the first few pages, I had a tiny moment of panic.

Wait… did I borrow the right book?

The characters felt different. The storyline didn’t align with what I remembered. The tone was nothing like the movie. The differences were so striking that I actually double-checked the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading something else entirely.

And yet, both versions turned out to be charming in their own unique ways.

From the movie, I felt these themes especially strongly:

• Humans can be far more monstrous than any creature. The film captures how cruelty, fear, and prejudice shape the world long before the monster even appears.
• Children learn how to treat the world by watching the adults around them. Victor teaches the monster the way his own father treated him: cold, harsh, transactional. The monster mirrors Elizabeth the same way. The film adds layers of trauma, portraying Victor as someone shaped by loss and emotional neglect. This is very different from the book, where Victor actually grows up in a loving, supportive family.
• Elizabeth’s character takes a different shape in each version. In the book, she’s Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s adopted cousin and eventual fiancée, raised lovingly in the Frankenstein household. In the movie, she becomes Lady Elizabeth Harlander, an entomologist and niece of an arms dealer who funds Victor’s work. It’s a creative shift, but an interesting one.

There are many more differences (well, I know, that’s how adaptations work), but instead of listing them all, I simply want to say this: both the book and the film stand beautifully on their own.

I’m usually not a fan of movie adaptations, especially when the book is considered a classic. But Frankenstein became a rare exception. The movie touched my eyes, mind, and heart, and that experience made me even more curious to read the original. The book, in turn, deepened everything I thought I knew about the story.

Here, I’ll share some of my favorite bits from the book, the moments that stayed with me long after closing the final page.

My Favorite Bits

• “We are fashioned creatures, but half made up.”

• “My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirirts are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.”

• Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realize.

• “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

• “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”

• Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.

• I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me.

• My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.

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Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Publication date: 1 January 1818
Number of pages: 260 pages

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