'Perverting the Family: Re-Working Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Blood-Ties in Penny Dreadful'

Heholt, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427 (2018) 'Perverting the Family: Re-Working Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Blood-Ties in Penny Dreadful'. In: 'Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives'. Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. ISBN 978-1-6844-8060-9

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Abstract / Summary

This chapter looks at the re-working of the Frankenstein story in the Showtime/Sky production Penny Dreadful (2014-16). It argues that the show provides an excessive Gothic re-imagining of the novel which focuses on questions around fatherhood, patriarchy, and the disastrous relationships apparent in a truly dysfunctional family. Penny Dreadful is an interesting text to examine as it exceeds its originating tale, taking it into darker Gothic places, leading Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus towards an explication of the radical critiques and observations that were hinted at in the novel. In 1984 Mary Poovey famously argued that, “just as Frankenstein figuratively murdered his family, so the monster literally murders Frankenstein’s domestic relationships, blighting both the memory and the hope of domestic harmony with the ‘black mark’ of its deadly hand.” Frankenstein is resurrected and his domestic relationships are blighted still further as Penny Dreadful lays its own “deadly hand” on the novel’s narrative.

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