Victorian Visual Culture

Guillermo Del Toro’s 2025 adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a very fascinating film for many reasons, particularly when examining it through the lens of Victorian visuality and visual culture. I was very excited and anxious for its release, as Frankenstein is one of my favorite novels, let alone pieces of Regency-era (late Georgian period, just before the start of Victorian) literature. I will not be delving into how faithful this adaptation is to its original text because that would require more time and space than is available. I was so happy to be in this class at the time of this film’s release because it allowed me to understand threads of the film that would have been otherwise untouched in my mind.

A fascinating aspect of this film is Del Toro’s choice to situate the contents of the film more firmly inside the Victorian era for the utilization of Victorian and Gothic aesthetics and themes. Mary Shelly’s novel was finished in 1818, and Del Toro’s film is set in 1857, years after Shelly’s death. RoggerEbert.com says, “placing the tale squarely in the Victorian era grounds it in period trappings more familiar to the contemporary viewer, one supposes; it also allows its visionary (at least at first) scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) to place electricity more fully at his disposal when animating his creature,”(Kenny). This is a fact of the film but not the one of focus for this conversation, as the film’s being set more directly inside the Victorian era also allows it to play with the photography and visuality that is characteristic of Victorian culture.

One moment in the film that stood out to me was when I watched it for the first time at Amherst Cinema. The Creature is exploring Victor’s castle and comes across a photograph. This is the first time we see the Creature interact with any sort of visual media, let alone an image of himself. Drawing on my knowledge of Victorians’ changing attitudes toward photography, I believe that Victor was unaware of the consequences of his creature’s being photographed, particularly in this death-like state. Another interesting aspect of this photograph is that it was taken before the creation was animated; in that sense, it is a sort of ante vitam (pre-life)/pseudo post-mortem photograph. It is reminiscent of post-mortem photography, a Gothic stronghold of Victorian mourning practices. This moment is incredibly poignant in the film as it is the moment when the creature realizes his own strange subjectivity and the truth of his past and genesis. It is an extraordinary moment through the lens of Victorian visuality because, in reality, this situation could never have occurred. A dead person could not view their own post-mortem photograph; it is simply not possible. But here, through the scientific and natural weaving of the gothic tale of the creature and a post-mortem collaboration between Shelley’s work and Del Toro’s new film, this strange question can be brought to light. In this beautiful shot, the camera frames the photo to cover the creature’s face, and so, through the camera’s lens, we see the lifeless face atop the life-filled body of the Creature.

Works Cited 

Frankenstein. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Netflix, 17 Oct. 2025.

Kenny, Glenn. “Frankenstein Movie Review & Film Summary (2025) | Roger Ebert.” Roger Ebert, 16 Oct. 2025, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/frankenstein-film-review-2025.