Was Frankenstein’s Monster Jewish?

Abstract

My article examines the often-claimed links between Mary Shelley’s monster and the tale of the Jewish golem, an artifi?cial man of clay that first appeared in medieval Jewish mysticism. Given the golem tradition’s medieval origins, it has sometimes been assumed that the golem story provided the blueprint for both Goethe’s poem ‘Der Zauberlehrling’ and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Exploring the Kabbalistic tradition and the emergence of Christian and later Jewish secular narratives on the golem since the seventeenth century, as well as the possible relationship of these tales to Goethe’s and Shelley’s writings, my paper examines the very problem of the claims of ethnic and cultural authenticity that this hen-and-egg debate raises.