Frankenstein's Creature —whom we mistakenly tend to call "Frankenstein"— is born eight feet tall, with yellow skin stretched tight over his muscles and a look that sends all who see him fleeing. Everyone assumes, from his body, that he is a monster. But Mary Shelley wrote exactly the opposite: he is born curious, sensitive and kind, and becomes a killer only because the world treats him as the monster his physique announces. He is the perfect literary refutation of the theory of somatotypes.
// The theoryThe body that "announces" evil
Sheldon claimed that the physique predicts conduct: the criminal body exists and can be read. The Creature is the thought experiment that disproves it. His body is as "monstrous" as can be imagined, and yet his nature is tender: he learns to speak by listening to a family, is moved by their kindness, secretly helps those he loves, longs for company and affection. If Sheldon's theory were true, that body should harbor a born killer. Shelley shows it harbors, at the start, almost the opposite —and that the killer is manufactured afterward—.
How is he manufactured? Through rejection. Every person who sees him assaults him, insults him or flees in terror; his own creator abandons him in horror the moment he gives him life. The Creature discovers that the world has decided, from his appearance, that he is a monster, and denies him any chance to be anything else. Only then —after unbearable pain and loneliness— does he embrace the role imposed on him and become the killer everyone already saw in him.
The self-fulfilling prophecy of the body
The Creature is the pure example of a self-fulfilling prophecy —the mechanism of labeling applied to the physique—. Society sees a monster, treats him as a monster, and by that treatment turns him into a monster. The body did not contain the evil; the evil was produced by the reaction to the body. It is the exact inversion of Sheldon: it is not that the monstrous physique causes the crime, it is that believing it does —and acting accordingly— ends up provoking it. The theory did not describe a biology; it described a way of treating people that manufactures the very thing it fears.
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// The subjectThe kindness no one wanted to see
What is heartbreaking about the Creature is all he could have been. Shelley gives him a rich inner life: he reads Milton and Plutarch, reasons, feels, asks only that someone accept him —a companion, a place—. There is not an ounce, in his origin, of the aggressiveness Sheldon attributed to imposing bodies. His final violence does not spring from his musculature, but from a moral wound: that of having been condemned without trial for his shape. When he demands an explanation from Frankenstein, he is entirely in the right: no one ever asked him who he was before deciding, from his face, what he was.
La Criatura
// The crackNeither born monster, nor guiltless killer
The crack with the Creature is subtle. To see him as a "monster" because of his body is to commit the crime of the novel —the very prejudice that destroyed him—. But turning him into a pure victim without responsibility is not faithful either: the Creature murders, even innocents like little William, in his spiral of revenge, and Shelley does not absolve him —she makes him feel horror and guilt for what he does—. The honest reading is the one the book itself proposes: rejection for his physique explains how the monster came to be, but does not exonerate the murders. Explaining the making of the monster does not erase his victims; it only distributes the responsibility —including that of a world that pushed him there—.
That is Shelley's genius, two hundred years before modern criminology: she offers neither the comfortable monster to fear nor the comfortable victim to absolve, but the full chain —an innocent being, a society that reads him by his body, and the tragedy that both, together, produce—.
Not manufacturing the monsters we fear
The Creature is this theory's final warning, and perhaps the most important in the archive: the myth of the criminal body is not only false, it is dangerous, because it tends to come true. Treating someone as a criminal for their physique —the "big, strange" child, the defendant with a threatening look, the one who is different— can push them to become one, closing the doors that would have saved them. The practical lesson is the inverse of Sheldon: do not look for the monster in bodies; beware of manufacturing it with your gaze. Justice and decency often consist in giving each Creature the chance the novel denied him —that of being judged by what he does, not by how he looks—.
"I am malicious because I am miserable," says the Creature, and in those six words there is more criminology than in all of Sheldon's theory. The monster did not come in the body. We put it there, by looking.
Three key takeaways
- The Creature refutes Sheldon: he is born kind in the most "monstrous" body possible, and becomes a killer only because the world rejects him for his appearance. The body did not cause the crime; the reaction to the body did.
- It is the pure self-fulfilling prophecy: believing that a physique announces evil —and treating someone accordingly— ends up manufacturing the monster that was feared. The theory described a treatment, not a biology.
- Neither born monster nor guiltless killer: rejection explains the spiral, it does not exonerate the murders. The lesson inverts Sheldon: do not look for the monster in bodies, beware of manufacturing it with your gaze.
Sources · further reading
- Shelley, M. (1818). Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo. Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.
- Sheldon, W. H. (1949). Varieties of Delinquent Youth. Harper & Brothers.
- Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es La Criatura?
La Criatura («monstruo de Frankenstein») es un villano de Frankenstein, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. "I am malicious because I am miserable.
¿Por qué La Criatura (monstruo de Frankenstein) se convierte en villano?
Frankenstein's Creature and Sheldon's theory: the definitive refutation of the criminal body. A colossal being who is NOT born violent —he is born kind— and becomes a killer only because the world, terrified by his looks, rejects him.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a La Criatura?
El caso de La Criatura se analiza desde la Teoría de los somatotipos. The theory of somatotypes held that a monstrous body predicts criminal conduct. Frankenstein's Creature is its perfect literary refutation: he is born curious and kind, and becomes a killer only because everyone rejects and assaults him over his appearance. His crime is caused not by his body, but by society's reaction to his body —the self-fulfilling prophecy turned into a novel—.
