Abstract
<p>The Creature of <em>Frankenstein</em> never managed to fulfil his desire of finding a loving partner in Mary Shelley’s novel, but his symbolic progeny continues to haunt the modern popular culture. The article discusses the case of “family resemblance” between Frankenstein’s Creature and the title antihero of Gaston Leroux’s <em>The Phantom of the Opera</em>. In their respective literary sources, they share an inborn deformity, an appreciation for music, a romantic yearning for love and acceptance matched with sociopathic violence. Recently, the TV series <em>Penny Dreadful</em> elaborates on these allusions, conflating the narratives by Shelley and Leroux, as well as their later adaptations.</p>
Highlights
Recombining iconic Victorian characters has become something of a staple of millennial popular culture – e.g. Kim Newman’s novel Anno Dracula (1992), Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999), or the TV series Dickensian (2015-2016), to mention but a few examples in different media
It comes as no surprise that John Logan, the creator of horror drama television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), would choose to draw upon a wide array of Gothic fiction
Regarding the fact that the novel – known for its many adaptations, most of them in the English language – has generally been accepted as part of the anglicised Gothic canon, so much so that The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction lists it alongside the works of Stoker, Stevenson, and Wilde (Hogle, 2002b, p. 9) rather than position it in the tradition of the French fantastique
Summary
Recombining iconic Victorian characters has become something of a staple of millennial popular culture – e.g. Kim Newman’s novel Anno Dracula (1992), Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999), or the TV series Dickensian (2015-2016), to mention but a few examples in different media. Already in the original novel, Gaston Leroux’s antihero, Erik the Phantom, bears more than a passing likeness to Shelley’s monster.
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