The Monsters Mate: Depictions of Bridal Costume in Frankenstein.

Frankenstein’s bride takes her image from the film, and has grown into a character of her own right, crafted by the same scientist who made the monster, to give him a mate. Illuminating viewers with complex ideas about marriage, womanhood and monstrosity her costumes have rarely gotten the attention the deserve.

What did Shelley Say?

In the original novel, Elizabeth is the female lead, initially Victor Frankenstein’s cousin, whom he falls in love with. A mate for the monster is mentioned, but destroyed before it ever comes to life, leaving the monster so distraught, and dedicated to revenge that he kills Elizabeth on the eve of her wedding to Victor.

Consequently both Elizabeth and another monster have been referred to as ‘Frankenstein’s bride’ whether the bride he intends to love, or the bride he has created. And honestly with the way people also confuse Frankenstein and the monster, its so surprise that the two women have become confused and overlapping.

The Bride of Frankenstein

As with the iconic green faced, bolted neck-ed image of the monster himself whom we all imagine as a default, the image of a monster bride surfaces in Universals 1930s films. Frankenstein (1931) features Elizabeth as a blonde beauty queen who wears flowing white gowns and hats. A total innocent, who is terrified in the night of the wedding.

When 1935 comes around we meet the monster bride. Played by Elsa Lanchester this characters costuming is fascinating. To some degree she follows the sae formula as the costuming of the monster in the first film, with attention paid to the literal – her arms are bandaged from being roughly sewn together, her hair stands in end with two bleached white stripes from being electrocuted back to life, she has delicate scarring under her chin and her bridal inspired gown is made from the white sheets of the operating table.

But here the similarity ends, and we see the gender divide begin to take on a life of its own.

Where Boris Karloff’s costuming falls into the horror category, with a scarred huge forehead, sunken cheeks, neanderthal sloping forehead and visible metal bolts sticking out of his neck, his bride is a vixen of the screen.

Her scarring is minimal and doesn’t interfere with her beautiful features, her flowing dress – whilst boxy at the shoulder and not exactly trendy in the 1930s, doesn’t suggest the subversion of social norms that the monsters all black and visible t-shirt portray. With her hair up, her innocent white dress falling perfectly and her perfect red lipstick – she cuts a pretty glamorous figure. She has no lines, and barely any screen time, but still manages to serve as the glamorous face of the films posters, in her white bandages and gown essayist Alberto Manguel sees her as a bride, a baby, a ghost.. all at once. Women so often are imagined to only fit into one box I.e. Be a Madonna or a whore, and to still be critiqued no matter which way they are categorised. A female monster who fits multiple boxes, and looks sexy and appealing at the same time – that’s a dangerous woman.

It's interesting that where the male monster invokes fear from being dirty, decaying, breaking taboos and challenging the social structure – the female monster invokes fear by being beautiful.

The idea of a shockingly uncontrollable female monster has overcast Elizabeth’s character as Frankenstein’s actual bride in recent films, up until Del Torro’s most recent interpretation. In ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ (1995) Helena Bonham Carter plays Frankenstein’s love interest, who horrifically killed by the monster in anger is sewn together with Justine, one of his friends to create the female monster of the film. She isn’t revived necessarily by love or a desire to create a mate, but from a combination of revenge and desire to play god in the two male protagonists. Her costuming illustrates this objectification with crude stitches holding her head to another woman’s body (all women are interchangeable for these men), bald with burnt patches humiliatingly left visible from her particularly gruesome death, and with one eye totally stitched shut.

She also wears a stunning bridal gown, its delicacy a cruel contrast to her disfigured head, she is truly a battered china doll, dressed up and played with by Victor to serve his own desires. With a head matching that of the monster, and a young, ‘ideal’ female body connecting her to Victor, her position in this tug of war between two male egos is immediately visible. She, herself is so distraught to see the monster that she has been turned into, that she ends her own, second life.

Elizabeth

As the human woman in many a Frankenstein remake, Elizabeth has often been treated with the same heavy handedness of all our female leads – a perfect, positive woman who is beautiful, supports her man, and doesn’t really have any more depth than that. As Victors love interest in older movies her costuming was often, beautiful, feminine, perfect. With the every present bridal theme that draped her in white lace and made her the perfect innocent.

If you are reading this, you have probably already read some of the gorgeous coverage of Del Torro’s costuming for this character. From the rich, iridescent beetle greens a blues, to the almost abstract moth wing prints on her cape, Elizabeth’s goodness is described through her connection to nature. As an emblem of natural order she represents everything that Victor fails to realise, whilst also serving as the beautiful, always glamorous love interest in the story. It’s an interesting choice that in raising empathy for the monster she almost serves as literally the monsters bride and the bride of Frankenstein, with both male characters loving her. We again, see her don the wedding dress, in the final scene of her death. A perfect depiction of innocence, unspoilt potential and a perfect blank slate representing the new beginning that is taken away from her.

Where usually the monster threatens or kiils the bride character, in Del Torro’s love story version The Monster is undoubtedly good, whilst Victor is undoubtedly bad and is the one who shoots Elizabeth on her wedding night. Another female lead faces her demise for literally getting in the way of two men’s revenge story, it is the most emotion-evoking timing for a patriarchal, and traditional audience to see a young womans life taken away on the ‘best night of her life’ when she was primed to begin her life’s true journey – as a wife.

The Bride

The newest installation of a Frankenstein-esque female takes the form of a feminist story, giving the bride not only a voice, but a personality to boot. The costuming in Bride! By Maggie Gyllenhaal is by no other than costume legend Sandy Powell. And some styling concepts remain from the long legacy of Frankenstein’s that came before.

The frazzled hair, the pale skin, even the ink blot style scar that remains from the process of bringing her back to life. Sandy pushed hard for the bright orange of the stars dress, and paired it with electric blue tights, red boots. As with The Monster itself in many Frankenstein films the Bride adds layers to her outfit as her story unravels, the black stain, the general dishevelment, the eventual fur coat addition.. changing and developing into herself as life happens around her. Narratively she is uncovering who she is now, post-death, so the contextual changes happening to her same outfit mirror this self discovery journey.

We haven’t had a lot of clear explanations for the costumes, or a peek at Sandy’s inspo yet, but with the revealed black bra this bride echo’s the revealed black t-shirt worn by the famous 1930s monster. Breaking taboos through this revealment of what should be concealed, the costumes also juxtapose with what would have actually been in vouge in the 1930s, in an era known for subdued elegance a vivid orange dress with blue stockings would not only evoke a fear of something different, and potentially challenging to the social structure, signalling our bride as a social outsider, a good time girl and maybe someone who was always going to be too much for the social setting of the era in which she exists.