Monsters as Mirrors: Villains as Reflections of Society
- Prarthana Binish
- Oct 17
- 6 min read
Halloween is approaching, the air carries the calling of the upcoming winter, and people all around the world are gathering their costumes for nights of magic and mischief. However, it is important to remember that, much like costumes or candy, Halloween has a larger meaning in our society than just as a celebration. It is a night we invite the monsters out from the shadows into our stories and dance with our loved ones. From vampires to witches to the invisible man to nightmare clowns and everything in between, each ghoul we invite in that night will give us more than simply something to scare us. Each ghoul is a climate in which the greatest fears, desires, and flaws of society are reflected. There is a particular haunting aspect to literature in this tradition. Monsters and villains are not merely adversaries, but rather they symbolize what we fear and what we might not dare confess.
From Greek mythology to Gothic novels, monsters and villains have always shown the discomfort and ugly truths about the human race and society. When we think of our fears and rewrite them as fiction, we shape those fears into monsters that seem to come out of the pages of our imagination and overtake our world. If Halloween takes our colours, pumpkins, and laughter and devises a framework and context reflecting our confrontation with that which would otherwise remain repressed. Each costume is a ghost.
Dracula: The Outcast Invader
Dracula is a classic of horror literature written in 1897 by Bram Stoker. Beyond being a fascinating read, Dracula represents the fears of Victorian England. Like the fear of invasion from outsiders, of sexual freedom, and of degeneration introduced by outsiders. Dracula’s foreignness, charm, and pervasive vampirism personify anxieties of the "other" in society as disrupting a moral code and erasing the lines of a comfortable social order.
Stoker's Victorian England is tightly fortified by themes of nation, body, and gender. Dracula, the "Monstrous Outsider" terrorises Victorian stereotypes of immigrants, race, and boundaries by emerging from the gloom of Transylvania to the urban core of London. He is both a charming member of the aristocracy and a terrifying, immoral intruder. Scholars have examined how dark features, and sexual transgression are contradictory to patriarchal identity and the very fantasy of purity.
What lends the story of Dracula its terrifying ice is its simultaneous seduction. He not only terrifies but also entices and tempts. His presence erodes the lines once defined between what is moral and desire and what is pure or corrupt. The Victorian obsession with chastity and control creates fear not in violence, but in uncontrollable attraction to surrender. His bite is an act of consuming context and an invitation to disengagement.
The "corruption" of Lucy and Mina introduces sexuality and disease to the novel. Vampirism destroys innocence, turning perfect women into deceptive figures that men both want and fear. This anxious tension reveals real Victorian attitudes obsessed with erasure and control. Dracula thus functions as a mirror for imperialistic guilt, forbidden love, and xenophobic hysteria.
The novel also displays anxieties about the empire itself. Britain is considered the coloniser of the world, but in the novel, they begin to fear it will itself be colonised. The hunter fears being the hunted. The boundaries that separate civilised from savage and self from other, collapse. This reversal of power continues to inform Dracula's resonance today. He embodies that there will always be a return from what has been excluded, suppressed, and demonised.
Medusa: Taboo of the Women’s Anger
Originating from Greek mythology, Medusa is a feared villain who had the power to turn those who gazed directly upon her into stone. Medusa's narrative is a portrait of the weaponizing of female rage and trauma. She is belittled not by her actions, but by society's need to silence and punish an undeniable woman. She was considered the most beautiful maiden but later punished by Athena for the crime of Poseidon and exiled to monstrosity for the crime of being seen.
Medusa's narrative epitomizes the patriarchal punishment of women who refuse to remain quiet. Her snakes in place of hair, her petrifying gaze, and her isolation become shorthand for the rage and grief society will call dangerous rather than understandable. In modern retellings of medusas, she is depicted as a feminist icon. Artistic adaptations assert that her monstrosity is societal, and the snakes are her crown as a reminder of her acceptance of her societal exile and her reimagining herself in response to the patriarchy's intolerance of female subjectivity.
For centuries, Medusa was depicted as a fearful character, something to be killed, hidden, or feared. But her eyes held the power of a woman’s gaze. Her power to turn men into stone can be viewed not as a cruelty, but as a boundary for those who trespassed against her. Athena’s curse eventually becomes a weapon of culture that can be seen through time in the ways women’s anger is often dismissed as hysteria, and women’s pain reinterpreted as a threat.
Medusa’s constant refiguring reminds us that society often demonizes victims, and silences trauma, especially when a woman disrupts the status quo. In art and literature today, Medusa rises again, but not as a monster, rather as a survivor. From reimaginings by feminist artists in visual art, through to retellings like Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind, Medusa is a profound image of resistance and challenges how stories are told, as well as who gets to narrate pain and who gets turned into myth. As snake hair, once seen as interpretive and cursed, shifts into and weaves in and out as resilience.
Frankenstein: The “Unwanted” Creation
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not just a mysterious gothic novel, and Frankenstein is more than just a collection of limbs sewn together. The creature in Frankenstein represents human alienation, hatred and prejudice. He is only a monster in the eyes of those who refuse to recognise his humanity. Victor's abandonment and the disgust that he faced taught him violence and bitterness. The monster is the creation of society, not nature.
The novel shows how society reacts to differences with hatred and disgust rather than compassion and empathy. The creature is innocent at first, but society teaches him rage and isolation. His tragic end reveals what is lost when we prohibit outsiders' acceptance, cruelly reacting instead to outsiders as though they are threats.
Shelley, at just eighteen years old at the time of publishing, produced a story that represented both the excitement of the age of science and the uneasiness in terms of morality. The novel was written in an era of industrial change and inspiring enlightenment, both of which promised progress while undermining humanity.
Frankenstein's monster is a metaphor for progress gone wrong and the tenuous nature of empathy. The true horror is not merely their appearance but our fear of the unknown and how that fear can turn anyone into a monster. Shelley's tale gives us pause to question who is the real monster- the creation, or the mother who abandoned their creation?
Today, the 'Frankenstein complex' serves as a cautionary idea in technology and ethics. From artificial intelligence to genetic engineering, Shelley's ghost hovers around every debate regarding the creation without the conscience of creating. The story serves as a reminder that rejecting empathy produces our very own monsters.
Why Monsters Matter
Dracula, Medusa, and Frankenstein’s Creature invite us to see ourselves in their stories. Monster myths reveal the fear of transformation, the impulse to punish difference, the desire for forbidden liberty, and the reluctance to acknowledge the humanity that lies beneath the monstrous surface. Dracula, Medusa, Frankenstein’s creature, and numerous others trouble us not simply for their threat but for the truths they embody that we refuse to face. Celebrations like Halloween provide us with the opportunity to visit those mirrors, as uncomfortable as they may be, and possibly glimpse what needs changing in ourselves and in the world.
There is meaning in every scream and shadow. The monsters we learn and talk about are the pieces of ourselves that we cannot look at directly. Each of their tales keeps them alive in the social, cultural, and moral anxieties of their time. Dracula expresses xenophobia and unfulfilled yearnings. Medusa thrives in feminist reclamation. Frankenstein's creature stands for societal alienation.
So, to study monsters is to study ourselves and the parts we alienate. They stand for the fears we clothe in fangs and shadows. Perhaps that is the silent lesson of Halloween.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRARTHANA BINISH
Meet Prarthana Binish, a history undergraduate lover who finds stories hidden in Delhi’s old streets and monuments. When she’s not exploring the past, she’s strumming her guitar, balancing the echoes of history with the rhythm of music.
Comments