Frankenstein's monster , commonly referred to as Frankenstein , [ a ] is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus as its main antagonist.
Shelley's title compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein , to the mythological character Prometheus , who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire.
In Shelley's Gothic story , Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method based on a scientific principle he discovered. Shelley describes the monster as 8 feet cm tall and emotional.
According to the scholar Joseph Carroll , the monster occupies "a border territory between the characteristics that typically define protagonists and antagonists". Frankenstein's monster became iconic in popular culture, and has been featured in various forms of media, including films, television series, merchandise and video games. Mary Shelley's original novel does not give the character a specific name. As in Shelley's story, the creature's namelessness became a central part of the stage adaptations in London and Paris during the decades after the novel's first appearance.
In , Shelley herself attended a performance of Richard Brinsley Peake 's Presumption , the first successful stage adaptation of her novel. Cooke," she wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt. Within a decade of publication, the name of the creator, "Frankenstein", was used to refer to the creature, but it did not become firmly established until much later. The story was adapted for the stage in by Peggy Webling , [ 7 ] and Webling's Victor Frankenstein does give the creature his name.
