Journal de Etica y Cine

Volumen 16 | Nº 1 - March 2026

Frankenstein in the Feminine. Variations of the Monstrous

Universidad de Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the Frankenstein myth through the relationship between science, creation, and the feminine from a psychoanalytic perspective. Drawing on Mary Shelley’s novel and its cinematic variations –Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and Poor Things (2023)– it examines how the scientific ambition to produce life encounters a structural limit that returns in the form of the monstrous. The female figures that emerge in these films introduce different modes of misalignment with phallic logic. In this way, the feminine appears as the point at which the scientific claim to mastery fractures, revealing the limits of human control over life. The contemporary return of the figure of Frankenstein thus allows us to question, in a context marked by accelerated technological development, current fantasies of absolute control over creation and their inevitable failures.

Keywords: Frankenstein | the feminine | monstrosity | horror | science

This article is, for the time being, only available in Spanish: Frankenstein en femenino. Variaciones de lo monstruoso

NOTAS

Creators and parents in the Frankenstein myth Frankenstein | James Whale | 1931 Eduardo Laso
A Melancholic Monster: A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Coppola’s Dracula Bram Stoker’s Dracula | Francis Ford Coppola | 1992 Tomás Gaete Altamirano
Promethean ethics in Oppenheimer’s film: risk, uncertainty, and ambivalence Oppenheimer | Christopher Nolan | 2023 Serapio Estanislao Cazana Canchis
Black Swan: blemish of the self in the mirror’s double Black Swan | Aronofsky | 2010) Ignacio Roldán Martínez
Ed Gein, unfriendly neighbor Jorge Bafico
Weaving together ethics and praxis Cinema as a simulator for holistic training in Health Sciences Enrique RichardMelisa Eileen Richard Contreras
Science fiction: film, politics, and education on alien invasion Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Don Siegel | 1956 - Arrival | Denis Villeneuve | 2016 Brito Alvarado, Xavier Sedeño-Valdellos, Ana
AI, accelerationism, and eroticism: An ethical-psychoanalytic reading through film Her | Spike Jonze | 2013 Aldana Argüello ValenzuelaRut Fidel

Etica y Cine (Ethics & Films) is a Peer Reviewed Quarterly Journal Edited by
Department of Psychoanalysis and Department of Deontology, School of Psychology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina
Department of Psychology, Ethics and Human Rights, School of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
With the collaboration of:
Center for Medical Ethics (CME), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway
Under the auspicious of:
The International Network of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics.

Frankenstein in the Feminine. Variations of the Monstrous

Table of Contents