Smith, in his introduction, talks about the more popular lens in which Shelly’s novel is viewed: feminist, communist, religious, and so one. Smith, though, does ground these examples in their relevance to Shelley’s experience and the events that took place when she wrote Frankenstein, Smith talking of her “immersion in the ideas about education, society and morality professed by her father, Godwin, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft; but also Humphry Davis on chemistry, Erasmus Darwin on biology” (547). Smith establishes that the themes prominent in Frankenstein are rooted in response to Shelley’s reality. This leads into a conversation concerning racism and slavery.

Smith gives multiple instances in which he adds a racial discourse to some discussions that have already taken place. When looking at Frankenstein as a response to Paradise Lost, Smith points out that the monster is referred to as a Calib, or “natural man” (550), as if he were a native of the free world. In addition, Smith talks of the creature’s yellow skin and how this is a reference to those living in the Far East.

Smith also believes that the monster’s learning of language is not indicative of a birth myth, but is rather an example of how natives had to learn the language of their occupiers during colonialism. In conjunction with this, the creature does not know his age, much like some of the natives during the post-colonial period.

What I find most interesting is the discussion pertaining to the monster’s lust for a companion, specifically a female one. Smith said that this mirrors the experience of natives and slaves who were repressed sexuality due to fear that they would bring harm to white women, with the intensifying of “Elizabeth Saxon’s features as the flower of white girlhood” (560).