Frankenstein’s monster is coded as both Oriental and African from its inception

Evidence

The monster kills several humans, including Dr. Frankenstein’s younger brother. But in his murder of the doctor’s bride, Elizabeth, one finds an uncanny resemblance to another monster—Othello. This may be a double inspiration for Frankenstein’s monster, who is described as both a mummy (Oriental) and an African throughout the book. In the 1818 edition, “the sharp contrast between the hazel-eyed, auburn-haired, high browed, fragile white woman and the dark monster” is evident, and in the 1831 edition, it is even more so, as this passage suggests: “Her hair was the brightest living gold… her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless… none could behold her without looking on her as a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 466

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s thesis that the monster image precedes and synthesizes multiple non-Western identities—mummy and African—into one racial other.

Related

• Frankenstein’s monster conflates Othello and Orientalist racial anxieties. (similarity 0.93)
• The Frankenstein monster is explicitly coded as an Oriental giant and mummy (similarity 0.88)
• Shelley imagined Frankenstein’s monster through Oriental and Egyptian tropes popular in Britain (similarity 0.85)
• Frankenstein’s monster symbolizes racial alterity through yellow skin coding (similarity 0.84)
• Shelley gave Frankenstein’s monster skin color that racializes its monstrosity against whiteness (similarity 0.83)
• Miscegenation anxiety drives the refusal to create Frankenstein’s monster’s mate (similarity 0.80)
• Monster narratives structure the Other as a racial pollution threat to white womanhood. (similarity 0.79)
• Skin color is the primary organ representing monstrosity across Western monster figures (similarity 0.78)
• The Gothic monster was a container for white-race degeneration anxieties (similarity 0.78)