While Hollywood’s many, many previous interpretations of Shelley’s tale focus on the gory reanimation process, the mad scientist, the surge of electricity and the pitchforks, the original novel is largely concerned – as one might expect from the daughter of a famous women’s rights activist – with a number of distinctly feminist themes.

Shelley delves into Frankenstein’s psyche, exploring why he is so utterly incapable of killing the creature he has made, or even realising his duty to do so – and highlights the fact that he is more the mother of a monstrous child than the maker of a fake human.

It is this nameless – and inherently female – dread of gestating a monster which truly set Shelley’s work apart from her contemporaries. And yet, when Shelley published her tome in 1818, many assumed that the eerie tale was the work of her husband, Percy Shelley.

Their (obviously flawed) logic claimed that a woman could never hope to craft something so horrifying and challenging. That she would lack the imagination to spin a spine-tingling tale of cadavers and rifled graves. That she would have any serious contribution to a discussion around the principles of life – and this in spite of the fact that Shelley, having already given birth twice and losing her first child at 12 days old, probably knew more about such “principles” than anyone else present.

Naturally, this forms a huge part of the new biopic – and Fanning (as Shelley) responds to her doubters with a rallying feminist cry.

“It is my story and you dare question a woman’s ability to experience lust, betrayal, death,” she says.

“My choices made me who I am and I regret nothing.”

The trailer for Elle Fanning’s Mary Shelley biopic will make you want to smash the patriarchy