Goddess worship is the earliest form of human religion; for early humans all over the world, the highest creator gods were all Mother Goddesses. Many cultures worshipped an “original ancestress,” a first female ancestor, or the cosmos itself as the living womb of the Goddess. Societies were structured around maternal lineage, not paternal.

In her book When God was a Woman, Merlin Stone writes, “In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman.” She also tells us that Goddess worship goes back “as far into the past as the Upper Paleolithic Age of about 25,000 BC.” Stone and other goddess theorists argue that patriarchal religion has long sought to replace the Mother, “thereby returning to an abstract and impossible ‘Father’.”(Sjöö & Mor, 1987)

The new Frankenstein film by Guillermo Del Toro features recurring womb imagery and strong oedipal themes. Victor’s mother dies giving birth to his brother early on, and this is when Victor’s own desire to create life begins. There are continual references to Victor’s mother and his grief throughout the film — Mia Goth, the actress who plays Elizabeth, the love interest, also plays Victor’s mother. She wears red, a color which, historically, often symbolizes the life-giving blood of the mother. The color reappears throughout in key moments, such as when Elizabeth visits Victor’s laboratory, when Victor kills his sponsor, when he succeeds in bringing his creation to life, and during Victor’s recurring dream where he is visited by an angel of death. Red has many symbolic meanings, of course, but by dressing Victor’s mother in all red early on, Del Toro links the color with her. Victor also drinks milk throughout the film, while other men drink brandy — signaling his lack of maturity as well as his longing for his late mother. He sets out to become a mother in his own way, and to conquer “Nature herself,” as he puts it; to create life from the death which surrounds him.

Furthering the symbolism, we then have the watery, womb-like chamber where Victor first chains up his Creature, and the birth canal-esque tunnel through which he finally enters the world, reminding us that the Creature is effectively a newborn who has been abandoned by his creator.

In ancient Matrilineal societies, the head of the family was the mother. At this time, there was no sure way to know who fathered each child, so all children belonged to their mother and to the community. Later, when men got into hoarding wealth and wanted to ensure their lineage to pass on property, they became more possessive of women, in order to know which child belonged to which man.

To perpetuate this system, to be able to see themselves in god, to empower themselves to rule over women, children, and Nature, early patriarchs rewrote ancient myths to suit their agenda — to make their god male. Man, they decided, was created in their god’s image, and woman from his rib — a pervasive fantasy which exists to subjugate women and girls and to psychologically and socially reinforce their inferiority to men.

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney proposed the concept of “womb envy” in 1926 as a counterpoint to Freud’s famous theory of “penis envy,” arguing that men may harbor unconscious resentment toward women’s unique ability to create and bear life.

The male creator myth is just one example of womb envy, but to this day, it continues to be the means by which patriarchy attempts to naturalize itself.

Contemporary men in positions of power perpetuate this pattern in their fascination with artificial intelligence, an attempt to engineer their own forms of “life creation.” Jeff Bezos of Amazon has just announced that his new AI startup project will be called “Project Prometheus.” I’ll remind you that the alternative title of the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is The Modern Prometheus, and that in Greek mythology, Prometheus is said to have sculpted humanity from clay – another fiction of patriarchy, and another replacement for the creative power of the womb. How fitting that one of the richest men alive has chosen this title for his life-creation fantasy fulfillment project. With it, he makes himself a god, linking the act of divine creation itself to modern AI engineering.

Mary Shelley, writing two hundred years ago, gave her main character this ancient desire to create life. Her father, husband, and their friend Lord Byron had all recently written on Prometheus, and Mary had just lost her first born child in infancy. So it’s only natural that she chose to focus on themes of motherhood, creation, life and death.

Del Toro’s adaptation, though a deviation from the novel in several ways, stays true to many of Shelley’s key explorations, making Victor even less sympathetic and the Creature more so, and arguably interpreting Shelley’s Victor as an unreliable narrator.

In the novel, Frankenstein’s monster kills Elizabeth to get revenge on Victor for creating him, and on the townspeople for rejecting him. This part of the story is told from Victor’s point of view, though, so the reader is limited to one version of events. In Del Toro’s version, Victor actually kills Elizabeth, then blames it on his Creature. Moments like this hint at the idea that Shelley’s Victor may not have been giving us the full picture. Though the Victor of the novel is deeply flawed, he simply flees out of horror and panic when he sees that he has succeeded in creating life. This is cowardice, yes, but not necessarily cruelty, although the Creature is still left abandoned. The Victor of the novel is also riddled with guilt every time the Creature hurts someone else. In the new film, instead of running, Victor immediately chains the Creature up and keeps him captive, then tries to kill him by setting the whole building on fire — all before the Creature ever hurts anyone.

Whether or not Del Toro is intentionally drawing comparisons to real world patriarchy through this character, the parallels are certainly there. Like Victor, patriarchy seeks to conquer death and nature, and make gods of men. Patriarchy, too, kills with no accountability and edits history to favor itself. (Let’s remember that capitalism and colonialism are both systems born from patriarchal ideology.)

The Victor of this film can be interpreted as representing the harmful effects of patriarchy, leaving nothing but pain, shame, death, and destruction in his wake. The shame impressed on Victor by his father, the pain of his mother’s death, and his repressed grief all lead to Victor’s individualistic and arrogant ambition, then to violence. Prejudiced against his own creation and editing the truth to make himself look better, the key difference from the novel is that Del Toro’s Victor is, without a doubt, the villain of this story.

Much of Frankenstein‘s lasting cultural impact must be attributed to the moral and philosophical questions it evokes, which have only become more relevant since its initial publication in 1818. If the Creature did kill Elizabeth, for example, would Victor still be to blame? To what extent is he to blame for the people his Creature kills, and in a broader sense, to what extent is one responsible for harm caused by one’s creation? Does the cause of scientific discovery ever justify pain and suffering?

Mother Nature herself must also have trouble with these very questions, for we, her children, harm her every day. We live in a time where the inventions of man are responsible for global carnage on a daily basis. Even further, humanity is now trying to create “artificial” life, with little regard to potential consequences. Just how far will men go to fulfill their god complexes? And if AI is proven to be as harmful to people and planet as we suspect, who, if anyone, will be held accountable?

thank u for reading :)

Sources:

Del Toro, G. (Director). (2025, October 17). Frankenstein [Theatrical Release]. Netflix.

Shelley, M. (1818). Frankenstein. Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.

Stone, M. (1976). When God Was a Woman. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Mor, B & Sjöö, M. (1987). The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. Harper.

Gage, M. J. (1893). Woman, Church and State: The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45580/45580-h/45580-h.htm.

Metz, C. (2025, November 17). Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/technology/bezos-project-prometheus.html