The Repulsive Romanticization of ‘The Bride’ of Frankenstein’s Monster
*As the Bride exists in other forms of media, for the sake of argument, I’m only focusing on the film from 1935 as this is where the iconography of the two characters is sourced.*
Today, regardless of your feelings on the commercialization and capitalist spin on the societal pressure to marry and reproduce, is Valentine’s Day. It’s also the day where listicles of famous couples throughout history begin to dominate the click-bait driven homepages of just about every website imaginable. For horror fans, this also means we’re bombarded with a ton of elementary school style valentines, memes, and “relationship goal” posts featuring Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride. It’s a cute way to participate in theory, but there’s a massive problem with saddling our fandom to Frankie and The Bride…
The so-called “Bride” of Frankenstein fucking hates Frankenstein’s monster.
For those that have never actually seen 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein, let me get you up to speed. The titular Bride is given barely any screen time, appearing for roughly three whole minutes. Dr. Frankenstein reanimates the body of a companion for his misunderstood monster and upon her awakening, is immediately horrified by everything around her. She hisses at the monster who cries out, “she hate me like the others” and proceeds to tear apart the entire laboratory and tower. He kills them both by blowing up the lab, but not before telling her “we belong dead.” They die. The end.
For a movie called “The Bride of Frankenstein,” the film surely doesn’t give a single warm shit about the titular character or how she feels about becoming a Bride. The source material (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) doesn’t do her many favors either, existing as a bargaining chip for the monster as the only way he’ll agree to leave society. The would-be Bride never even gets the chance to live once again because Dr. Frankenstein has a change of heart after thinking about the possibility of his two creations making monster babies and destroying all of humanity and elects not to reanimate her.
Look, I get it. Universal needed to shoehorn in a female character into its Universal monster camp group like a state college pamphlet trying to boast diversity, but it’s never sat well with me that the Bride was the choice. First of all, Countess Marya Zaleska of Dracula’s Daughter fame has a whole-ass movie and character arc, not to mention a heart wrenching story about coming to terms with her own sexuality, compared to the Bride who exists solely as a gift for another character and is immediately killed for daring to have her own autonomy.
It’s likely due to the iconic appearance of the Bride’s electric striped, gravity-defying hair and her perfectly placed stitching (and the fact Countess Zaleska is a big ol’ lesbian) but when it comes to the pop culture mass production of horror themed “romantic” gifts, Frankie and The Bride reign supreme. I’m currently in the midst of planning for my own wedding and it’s extremely disheartening that the only two options I have for ready-made romantic horror decor either forces me to culturally appropriate Dia de los Muertos sugar skull couples in wedding attire, or features a couple that never actually loved one another and would up dead because the dude was a whiny pissboy who didn’t get the girl he felt he was entitled to have.
At the very least, I’d love it if horror fans stopped sharing things like “we were made for each other” featuring illustrations of Frankie and The Bride. Frankie was not made for the Bride. She was made for him without any say or consent, and had things worked out, she would have existed for his pleasure and happiness and nothing more.
The Bride and Frankie fall under the same category of revolting romanticism as Harley Quinn and The Joker. I’ll never quite understand why so many people post “cute” valentines striving to emulate couples that are one-sided, toxic as hell, and promote extremely unhealthy relationships. I’ll be the first to admit that horror doesn’t have a lot of pop culture juggernauts to choose from in terms of the “healthy relationship” department, but that doesn’t mean we need to fixate so heavily on couples that basically serve as a proverbial red flag.
Not to mention, it makes you look like you don’t know the ending of the oldest horror movies ever made, so…there’s that too.
