In the stormy summer of 1816, a group of young British radicals gathered at a Swiss villa to tell ghost stories. Rain lashed against the windows of the Villa Diodati as Mary Godwin, soon to be Mary Shelley, conceived the tale of Victor Frankenstein and his nameless creation. Pop culture has long remembered this moment as the birth of modern science fiction. Yet beneath the gothic horror lies a fierce, overlooked intellectual argument. The novel went far beyond a warning about scientific hubris, standing as a radical Romantic defense of animal rights, deeply shaped by the burgeoning vegetarian movement of the early nineteenth century.
Vegetarianism was undergoing a dramatic transformation during this era. It was shifting from an eccentric lifestyle choice into a militant ideological practice. Among the Romantics, Percy Bysshe Shelley was the most passionate advocate for a meat-free existence. In his influential 1813 essay, A Vindication of Natural Diet, he argued that humanity’s spiritual and physical decay began the moment humans abandoned their natural herbivorous state. He reframed the biblical Fall of Man and the Greek myth of Prometheus as allegories for the introduction of meat-eating and fire-based cooking. To Percy Shelley, the consumption of flesh was the literal poison of human society, bringing disease, violence, and tyranny.
Mary Shelley grew up in the center of this philosophical storm. Her father, the political philosopher William Godwin, had adopted a vegetarian diet for health reasons. In his novels, he painted animal cruelty as a sign of moral degradation. Her mother, the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, taught that mistreating animals corrupted human morality and warned that children who tormented mice would grow up to torment humans. By the time Mary eloped with Percy Shelley in 1814, vegetarianism was a central pillar of their shared life. They lived as vegan pioneers, allowing butter and eggs into their kitchen only under protest and in minuscule amounts.
This radical ideology directly shaped the narrative architecture of Frankenstein. The novel presents two opposing forces, the fallen human creator and his innocent, herbivorous creation. Victor Frankenstein represents the dark, destructive path of human supremacy over nature. His scientific obsession slowly strips him of his natural empathy. To build his creature, Victor pillages slaughterhouses and dissecting rooms, a process that causes his human nature to shrink back in loathing. He tortures living animals to animate lifeless clay. By severing his connection to the living world, Victor loses his humanity long before his creation ever opens its eyes.
In stark contrast, the Creature enters the world as the ultimate Romantic Child of Nature. He is born innocent and free from the corrupting influence of human society. He wanders the forests, sustaining himself entirely on berries, nuts, and fresh water. When the Creature finally speaks, he delivers a passionate defense of his vegetarian lifestyle. He tells his creator that his food is not that of man, and that he does not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut his appetite. Acorns and berries afford him sufficient nourishment. This is a profound ethical statement. The Creature’s dream of a peaceful future with a female companion relies entirely on a shared commitment to this harmless existence, promising to retreat to the wilds of South America where the sun will ripen their food.
The turning point of the Creature’s life arrives when he encounters the very element that defines his creator, fire. When he discovers the embers left by wandering beggars, he accidentally burns his hand. Soon, he learns to use the fire to cook his food. He even tastes the roasted offal left behind by the travellers. This moment serves as a dark parody of the biblical forbidden fruit, representing his first step toward human corruption. Yet, even when faced with the temptingly cooked meat, the Creature actively rejects the pursuit of flesh. He returns to his simple diet of acorns and wild plants, demonstrating a moral superiority that his human creator entirely lacks.
The tragedy of the novel lies in the breakdown of this innocent state. Recreant humanity rejects the Creature, driving him into a spiral of rage and isolation. As he turns to violence, his descent is described in explicitly carnivorous terms. He threatens to glut the maw of death with the blood of Victor’s friends. He speaks of tearing his enemies limb from limb, comparing himself to a lion rending an antelope. During their final chase across the frozen Arctic, the Creature even leaves a dead hare for Victor, instructing him to eat and find strength. This act of slaughter mirrors the fallen state of humanity after the biblical flood, when animal slaughter was first sanctioned and the dread of humans was placed upon all beasts.
The Creature’s trajectory closely mirrors the biblical tragedy of Cain. Like the first murderer, the Creature is exiled to a barren wilderness after his peaceful offerings are rejected by the world. His violent rebellion is not a reflection of his natural state, but rather a consequence of the cruelty inflicted upon him by human society. He becomes a monster only after humanity teaches him how to hate.
Over the last two centuries, theatrical and cinematic adaptations have systematically erased this vital eco-critical subtext. From early stage plays to Hollywood blockbusters, adapters have stripped the Creature of his gentle diet, often recasting him as an insatiable carnivore. Yet the original text remains. Mary Shelley’s masterpiece was a bold, visionary challenge to the speciesist assumptions of her time. By giving her monster a vegetarian soul, she forced her readers to confront an unsettling question. Who is the true beast, the gentle creature who refuses to shed blood, or the human society that cannot live without it?
Bibliographic Information
- Title: Vegetarianism and Science Fiction
- Subtitle: A History of Utopian Animal Ethics
- Author: Joshua Bulleid
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (Imprint of Springer Nature Switzerland AG)
- Publication Year: 2023
- Edition: 1st Edition
- ISBN: 978-3-031-38346-5 (Hardcover); 978-3-031-38347-2 (eBook)
- Series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (Series Editors: Susan McHugh, Robert McKay, John Miller)
- Historical Period Covered: Early 19th Century (Romanticism) to the First Decades of the 21st Century (with classical/antiquity background)
- Main Subject Areas: Literary Criticism, Science Fiction and Utopian Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Vegan Studies, Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities
(Chapter 2, p. 31)