Shelley gave Frankenstein’s monster skin color that racializes its monstrosity against whiteness

Evidence

Frankenstein’s monster is described as a “savage” who, during his exile, inhabits a far-away land north of the “wilds of Tartary and Russia.” His grotesque, yellow pallor is contrasted with Victor’s normal white skin tone. The monster’s skin color and hair are repeatedly compared to normal (white) humans. From the beginning, race helps to organize the narrative: the monster’s “first lessons include an ordering of the world at once racist, imperialist, and sexist—an oppositional structure ironically reinforced by his own exile away from the company of man.” Frankenstein’s monster is a symbol of racial alterity. Mary was influenced by her exposure to narratives about Africa and the West Indies. According to her journal, Mary read the first two volumes of Mungo Park’s study of West Africa and in 1816, the year Frankenstein was penned, Mary and Percy read the third volume of this study. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 465

Categorization

• XREF: The white-skin contrast and savage far-north geography parallel how the monster figure elsewhere carries displaced race and imperial anxiety.
• DEEPTHINKING: The loaded point that the creature’s own racist/imperialist/sexist ordering is reinforced by his exile — the monster mirrors the system that made it.