'Ten thousand times more malignant than her mate': Destabilising gendered assumptions underlying the defences of provocation and loss of control through a reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

This article explores how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein engages with notions relating to mens rea. It constructs a reading of the creature as Victor's double, and therefore a manifestation of his guilty mind. Utilizing interdisciplinary literary-legal methods, the article employs the central relationship in Frankenstein as a means of illuminating and critiquing the ways in which criminal law reproduces and perpetuates gendered notions of behaviour in relation to what is deemed a justified emotional response in the partial defences of provocation and loss of control. It concludes that Frankenstein helps to expose these gaps in legal discourse and ultimately destabilizes binaries of gendered criminality