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 protagonist, and representative of both a character's personal failings and the failings of the society in which they 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 dichotomy is here analyzed through examinations of the classic novels Frankenstein, 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 analysis of the 20th century film adaptations of the works. See more