He is obsessed with giving birth but has no interest in being maternal. Where Shelley’s Frankenstein is ruled by fear, del Toro’s is governed by Byronic self-aggrandizement. He does not run from the Creature; he imprisons, abuses, and attempts to murder it, furious at its perceived deficiencies.

He’s not a distant scholar but a satyr, rooted in the body, lusting after his future sister-in-law, eating like a starving man, hungrily performing his vivisections and surgeries

bellicose