Monster in My Closet: On Nature, Monstrosity and Trans Identity in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein - By Alessandra Jade

Written By: Alessandra Jade

Category: Essay

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In an engaging essay, Alessandra Jade delves into Mary Shelley's seminal novel "Frankenstein" to explore themes of monstrosity and societal alienation. Titled "Monster in My Closet: On Nature, Monstrosity and Trans Identity in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein," this piece is part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Alessandra examines the parallels between the creature's societal rejection and the transgender community's experiences. This thought-provoking essay invites readers to reconsider the boundaries of nature and identity.

About the Work

Alessandra Jade's essay weaves a compelling narrative by juxtaposing the creature's experience in "Frankenstein" with the challenges faced by the transgender community. Through a detailed analysis of naturalist philosophy and monster theory, the work questions societal norms and the perception of nature. The essay's insightful examination of the blurred lines between the natural and artificial serves as a poignant commentary on identity and acceptance.

Monster in My Closet: On Nature, Monstrosity and Trans Identity in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Original Submission by Alessandra Jade

Monster in My Closet: On Nature, Monstrosity and Trans Identity in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Alessandra Jade.

Mary Shelly’s 1818 novel Frankenstein has long held its space in the discourse of monstrosity and alienation, and in such, become a powerful analogue to those outcast by society writ large. With particular focus on the transgender community, there are many parallels that can be drawn between the culturally imposed monstrosity of transgenderism and the normative revulsion demonstrated by Victor Frankenstein towards his creature. In conjunctive analysis of naturalist philosophy and monster theory, the way in which Frankenstein blurs the lines of nature and norm highlight key aspects of transgender life, and more largely, the limiting implications of so called [un]nature.

To understand the way in which “nature” is defied in Frankenstein, it is paramount to come first to a consensus on what nature itself means. Rousseau’s definition hinges on the dated normative ideas that suppose the truest to nature individual is he who “still [survives] among the primates in... tropical forests,” and exists in a pre-moral state that is “neither good nor bad,” (Siep 55). The issue here is by that definition, the Creature befits quite closely the criteria of the natural man through seeking refuge in “the forest near Ingolstadt” (Shelly 73). A disjuncture is however revealed, in the notion that despite the natural man being “not aware of his own happiness” (Siep 55), the Creature describes himself first as “benevolent...with love and humanity” and then “miserable” at the hand of “[those] who abhor [him.]” (Shelly 71). This poses that he is in fact aware of his own happiness, and subsequently aware of the way in which it is challenged, which places him in a conflicted naturalistic middle ground.

A similar problem arises in the comparison of natural and artificial nature. Simply termed, “natural nature is nature that has not been transformed by manpower” (Wu and Wang 9) and hence, artificial, its inverse. This then calls into question the role of Victor Frankenstein in the synthesis of his Creature. As identified by Mueller, Frankenstein’s experimentation in Natural Philosophy continually “turns away from the natural world” (Mueller 134), insomuch rendering Creature an “artificial child” or a “machine” (Dishon 708). It then becomes a problem of language to define Creature neatly in either of the categories of nature. While the distinction between artifice and nature serve the purpose of elucidation, the very notion of nature being such that it can be both “natural” and “artificial” reads tautologically, if not paradoxically. One then is positioned to question whether human nature itself is natural or artificial, and hence, from the discussed view, more questions are produced than answers. Whether to term Creature as an inertly supernatural being, or merely a product of unnatural circumstance becomes less clear to that end.

Expansively in Mueller’s example, the chiasmatic representation of scientific study between Frankenstein and his creation further blurs the lines between the natural and the unnatural. Victor Frankenstein “goes into hiding” (Mueller 135) in his study of the replication of life, his “secret toil” (Shelly 34) compulsively taking hold of him such that he “could not tear [his] thoughts from [his] employment” (Shelly 35) and subsequently loses human connection. In the tellings of Creature, a similar study of life is carried out (Mueller 135). Creature's interest in “[observing], with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded [him]” (Shelly 73) mirror the initial interests of his creator, but with a clear methodological distinction. While Creature’s study focuses predominantly on parasocially “observing [his] friends (in the cottage of De Lacey)” (Shelly 82), Frankenstein’s approaches involve interference in the form of “[torturing] the living animal” (Shelly 34), and “[collecting] bones from charnel houses” (Shelly 35). It is this notion of human intervention in the natural world that informs the contradistinction of natural and artificial nature (Wu and Wang 9) and hence supports the notion that the actions of Creature as a supernatural being present more definitionally natural than those of Frankenstein.

Simply put, the respective discrepancies between both creator and creation, and the posed definitions of naturalism indicate a far from clean cut regard of either Frankenstein or the Creature as natural or unnatural beings. It is this dissonance that then haunts the latter half of the novel. Frankenstein is steadfast, from the very moment the creature opens its “dull yellow [eyes]” (Shelly 36), that the product of his study is intrinsically “demonical” (Shelly 37). This dramatic revile of the Creature, and his subsequent longing for “a favourable eye” (Shelly 71) is what places Frankenstein’s creation in phase with social outcasts. Seeing that nature does not agree on its bounds in Rousseau’s definition and the nature/artifice example, the same notion exists in the definition of biological sex, and positions transness in a similar regard.

In essence, the entire argument put forth could be reposed in the context of transgenderism, with similar conclusions. Stryker’s article on transgender rage proposes that “the transsexual body is an unnatural [one]” (Stryker 84) and that it informs a “rage bred by the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work against [one’s] survival" (Stryker 89). The position held that the “shape of [her] flesh [is] a barrier” (Stryker 90) aligns closely with Creature’s own account of himself in “the intensity of his wretchedness” (Shelly 127) insomuch mirroring not only transgender physicality in Creature, but also the psychosocial implications of societal exclusion. To both instances, [un]nature is presupposed by the "scientific interventions” (Shelton 120) in the synthesis of the body, or as Lepore states, an “assembled...unnatural birth” (Lepore 86) much like Shelly’s own intertextuality. But this definition of unnatural is not without logical fallacy. The supposition that the human hand in human birth contradicts nature (Wu and Wang 9) is to say that there is no instance of natural human birth whatsoever, and the error in that angle is obvious.

Frankenstein’s revile is then not an issue of nature and [un]nature, but the conflation of it with monstrosity. The argument thus far has supposed that neither Frankenstein nor Creature comfortably fit into any definition of “natural” or “unnatural,” and more largely that there is no consensus on the meaning of natural things. The regard of the Creature as a “miserable monster” (Shelly 37) after having “selected his features as beautiful” (Shelly 37) is a confusing, hypocritical motion on the part of Frankenstein. Monstrosity then emerges as means of defiling the implications of his work, not the Creature itself. It has been argued before that Victor Frankenstein “defies mortality not by living forever, but by giving birth” (Moers 4), and it is in the conception of this notion that Frankenstein’s monstrosity presents itself as the “[destabilization of] the foundational presupposition of fixed genders” (Stryker 84).

In understanding monstrosity, and its relation to transness, the Lovecraftian standing that the “oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Joshi and Schultz in Carleton 11) maintains that the attribution of monstrosity to both Creature and transgenderism is linked to the deviation from normative ideal. Mellor asserts that, to Victor Frankenstein, a strongminded woman “can appear only monstrously ugly” (Mellor 3) because she “defies sexist aesthetic” (Mellor 3). More simply, the idea of a womanly figure is incompatible with individualism and exists “available only to their lawful [husband]” (Mellor 4). To that, Frankenstein’s normative idea of femininity is coterminous with “artificial nature” (Wu and Wang 9), in that a woman-figure's ideal vocation is predetermined by the intervention of a male figure. This places Frankenstein, with specific reference to his birth-giving relation to Creature, in a liminal space between masculinity and femininity. [Un]nature, in this context, manifests in Frankenstein’s straying from his own normative ideals, and the resulting psychosocial disjunction is what constitutes monstrosity. The same can be said for transgenderism.

“Natural,” as identified here is a relative term that is presupposed only by value preference, and hence, cannot be blanketed across all things. A similar problem arises in the discourse on accurately defining biological sex where “lack of unanimity” amongst biologists persist (Eppley et al. 5). It is precisely this insufficient, contested binary that constitutes the othering of those that transcend it, despite the fact that exceptions to the binary way of defining sex do exist (Eppley et al. 5). This furthers that Frankenstein’s response to his act of defying sex is not inert but ideological and hypocritical at best.

Essentially, the pitfalls of the word natural and its conflicting definitions pose limitations in its use as a valuable descriptor. In the same way that monstrosity is conflated with [un]nature, both terms serve as an “ideological effort to marginalize the weak and normalize the powerful” (Poole in Click et al. 365) in the context of Frankenstein’s Creature, and transgenderism by and large. It is Frankenstein’s own [un]nature, and the hypocritical defilement of Creature that supposes that the real monstrosity of Mary Shelly’s novel is not the Creature at all, but Frankenstein’s revile as a product of his own failure to accept that his work transcended what he considered a fixed gender binary. Insomuch, Frankenstein the Doctor, by these standards and contrary to the popular adage, is in fact the monster.

Works Cited:

Carleton, R. Nicholas. “Fear of the Unknown: One Fear to Rule Them All?” Journal of Anxiety Disorders [OXFORD], vol. 41, June 2016, pp. 5–21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.03.011.

Click, Melissa A, et al. “Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media.” Popular Music and Society [ABINGDON], vol. 36, no. 3, July 2013, pp. 360–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2013.798546.

Dishon, Gideon. “Frankenstein, Emile, ChatGPT: Educating AI between Natural Learning and Artificial Monsters.” Educational Theory [Malden, USA], vol. 75, no. 4, August 2025, pp. 702–19, https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70025 .

Eppley, Madeline G, et al. “There Is No Consensus on Biological Sex.” Ecology Letters[HOBOKEN], vol. 29, no. 3, no. e70350, March 2026, https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70350.

Lepore, Jill. Review of It’s Still Alive.(Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus”)(Book Review). The New Yorker, vol. 94, no. 1, February 12, 2018, pp. 86–86.

Mellor, Anne K. “Usurping the Female.” Mary Shelley, 1st ed., Routledge, 1988, pp. 115–26, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203435588-6.

Mueller, Julia Laurel. “Wicked Problems: On Frankenstein and Natural History.” Literary Imagination [BALTIMORE], vol. 27, no. 2, 2025, pp. 133–50, https://doi.org/10.1353/lim.2025.a965369.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Prometheus. 1818. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Shelton, Stephanie Anne. “The Influence of Barad’s ‘Transmaterialities’ on Queer Theories and Methodologies.” GLQ [DURHAM], vol. 25, no. 1, January 2019, pp. 119–24, https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-7275614 .

Siep, Ludwig. “Rousseau’s Normative Idea of Nature.” Redescriptions : Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, vol. 4, no. 1, January 2000, pp. 53–72, https://doi.org/10.7227/R.4.1.5.

Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein. Above the Village of Chamounix - Performing Transgender Rage.” Kvinder, køn & forskning (Online), nos. 3–4, June 2011, https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v0i3-4.28037.

Wu, Kun, and Zhensong Wang. “Natural Philosophy and Natural Logic.” Philosophies (Basel) [BASEL], vol. 3, no. 4, no. 27, December 2018, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies3040027.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious event that celebrates diverse voices and creative expression. It provides a platform for writers worldwide to explore profound themes through various literary forms. The competition aims to foster creativity and bring to light unique perspectives that challenge conventional narratives.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Alessandra Jade for her thought-provoking essay "Monster in My Closet: On Nature, Monstrosity and Trans Identity in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein." Her participation in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 enriches the dialogue around identity and societal norms. We look forward to more insightful contributions from Alessandra in the future.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.