The Literary Monster on Film: Five Nineteenth Century British Novels and Their Cinematic Adaptations

Many monsters in Victorian British novels were intimately connected with the protagonists, and representative of both the personal failings of a character and the failings of the society in which he or she lived. By contrast, more recent film adaptations of these novels depict the creatures as arbitrarily engaging in senseless violence, and suggest a modern fear of the uncontrollable. This work analyzes the dichotomy through examinations of Shelley's Frankenstein, Stoker's Dracula, H. Rider Haggard's She, Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, and consideration of the 20th century film adaptations of the works.